When NASA went to the Moon, digital cameras didn’t exist and therefore exposures of the Lunar landscape had to be caught on film. Recently a team tasked with the preservation of the Apollo mission films uploaded the entire collection of images to Flickr. Among the 2400+ images are a surprisingly large amount of failed frames consisting of light leaks, over exposures, sticky labels and motion blur. Despite being redundancies, they carry with them an abstract beauty and a feeling of realness. NASA didn’t send photographers to the Moon, they sent astronauts and the vernacular feel to the plethora of pictures they brought back works as a surprising twist to a journey that is drifting further into our past.

Phogotraphy spent some time picking through the archive and choosing the thirty best ‘Imperfect Apollo’ frames we could find to share with you. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

All images downloaded and used under creative commons license from NASA.