Other Landscapes

[Image: Michael Benson, from Beyond, via the New York Times].

The New York Times reports on Beyond, “a one-year exhibition of more than 30 large-format photographs of Earth’s planetary neighbors,” opening soon at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. (For what it’s worth, the AMNH is easily one of my favorite museums in the world; I couldn’t count all the times I’ve been there.)

In any case, the New York Times explains that Michael Benson, “a writer, photographer and filmmaker, created the stunning series of pictures from the enormous archives of images taken over the years by robotic explorers of the solar system.”

Beginning in 1995 Mr. Benson spent years sifting through hundreds of thousands of photographs, looking for those that offered an aesthetic punch. He then painstakingly combined images, using digital tools like Photoshop, to eliminate dropouts and blurs from individual photos beamed back across millions of miles of space. A lovely picture of Europa, a moon of Jupiter, gliding in front of the swirling atmosphere of that planet, for example, is a blend of some 70 frames sent back by Voyager.

Benson’s got an entire book of these photographs, called Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes, complete with essays by Arthur C. Clarke and Lawrence Weschler. The book is very positively reviewed, being referred to as “breathtaking,” “resplendent,” “miraculous,” “sublimely exhilarating,” and “supremely reproduced.” Best of all, from my end, I’ll be in NY next month, so I’ll get to see the show…