'Space: Focus Earth' - the photos of Erich Hartmann
The book called Space: Focus Earth, published in 1972, brought together a collection of images taken by German-born American photographer Erich Hartmann, and gave a first behind-the-scenes look at Europe’s fledgling steps into space.
Hartmann was a renowned photographer of the 20th century, known for his pioneering use of emerging practices and his approach to capturing images of science, industry and architecture.
In the early 1970s, Hartmann was commissioned to document developments in the early European space programmes and how space could benefit life on Earth. This assignment included visits to various space facilities around Europe and culminated in a book called Space: Focus Earth published by ESRO and Arcade Publishers, Brussels, in 1972. Text was provided by the French journalist, director and screenwriter Georges Bardawil.
The foreword was written by Prof. Sir Hermann Bondi, who was Director General of ESRO from 1967 to 1971. Prof. Bondi noted, “It’s always impressive to look at the hardware of space capabilities, but this is not the true space capability. This rests in people. ESRO’s most impressive achievement, that of greatest value for Europe, is not in equipment and only partly in scientific output. It lies largely in the technical competence and European spirit which ESRO has inspired in its staff and European industry.”
These words still have relevance for ESA today, and indeed the most fascinating images in Hartmann’s book could be said to be the ones showing the people. Although he had a fascination with abstract patterns found in technology, such as light reflections and colours, or intimate portraits of precision-manufactured components, Hartmann’s principal interest was always the way in which people related to their natural surroundings or to the environments that they created.
Born in Munich in 1922, Hartmann and his immediate family escaped to the US shortly before war broke out in Europe, only for him to return again five years later after enlisting in the US army.
He served in England, France, Belgium and Germany then moved back to the US, settling in New York City. There, he married and pursued his interest in photography, studying at the New School for Social Research and working as a freelancer.
In the 1950s Hartmann first became known to the wider public through a series of photo essays for Fortune magazine, beginning with The Deep North, The Building of Saint Lawrence Seaway and Shapes of Sound. He later did similar essays on the poetics of science and technology for French, German and American Geo and other magazines.
Throughout his life he travelled widely on assignments for the major magazines in the US, Europe and Japan and for organisations such as AT&T, Boeing, Citroën, Corning Glass, DuPont, Ford, IBM, Pillsbury, Nippon Airways, Schlumberger and TWA among others.
In 1952 he was invited to join Magnum Photos, the international photographers’ cooperative founded in 1947 by Robert Capa, David Seymour, George Rodger and Henri Cartier-Bresson. There he served on the board of directors from 1967 to 1986, and as president in 1985-86.
Hartmann revisited his ongoing interest with space exploration in another set of images for Magnum Photos in 1979, called ‘Deep in the Heart of Technology’, which featured images of Ariane parts and other European space technologies. An exhibition of Hartmann’s space images, called Europe in Space, was shown at The Photographer’s Gallery in London in 1982
More about Erich Hartmann and his work.
