100 PHOTOGRAPHS 65
Somewhere in the Sea of Tranquillity, the little depression
in which Buzz Aldrin stood on the evening of July 20, 1969,
is still there—one of billions of pits and craters and pock-
marks on the moon’s ancient surface. But it may not be the
astronaut’s most indelible mark.
Aldrin never cared for being the second man on the
moon—to come so far and miss the epochal first-man des-
ignation Neil Armstrong earned by a mere matter of inches
and minutes. But Aldrin earned a different kind of immor-
tality. Since it was Armstrong who was carrying the crew’s
70-millimeter Hasselblad, he took all of the pictures—
meaning the only moon man earthlings would see clearly
would be the one who took the second steps. That this image
endured the way it has was not likely. It has none of the ac-
tion of the shots of Aldrin climbing down the ladder of the
lunar module, none of the patriotic resonance of his saluting
the American flag. He’s just standing in place, a small, frag-
ile man on a distant world—a world that would be happy
to kill him if he removed so much as a single article of his
exceedingly complex clothing. His arm is bent awkwardly—
perhaps, he has speculated, because he was glancing at the
checklist on his wrist. And Armstrong, looking even smaller
and more spectral, is reflected in his visor. It’s a picture that
in some ways did everything wrong if it was striving for hero-
ism. As a result, it did everything right.