‘In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing, I put together this post celebrating the moon in popular culture as well as photography’s fascination with the moon,’ writes Robert E. Jackson. ‘A number of museums in the U.S. will be mounting moon related shows this summer.’

The official moon photos will be familiar, and as is the way with luna things bring out the lunatics to decry the 1969 moon landings as mere Hollywood magic. You can trap a man in a can of film and make him repeat his actions over and over by commanding invisible currents but be inventive enough to land one on the moon – impossible! How tortuous and thin life must be to think of the fathomless and see only the finite. Of course once in a blue moon the naysayers are right. But the moon is for dreamers. Dream a little dream…

Fly me to the moon

Let me play among the stars

And let me see what spring is like

On a-Jupiter and Mars

In other words, hold my hand

In other words, baby, kiss me

– Fly Me To the Moon by Bart Howard

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”

― Mark Twain

“Bet I know something else you don’t. There’s dew on the grass in the morning.’

He suddenly couldn’t remember if he had known this or not, and it made him quite irritable.

‘And if you look’—she nodded at the sky—’there’s a man on the moon.’

He hadn’t looked for a long time.”

― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I saw the rain dirty valley

You saw Brigadoon

I saw the crescent

You saw the whole of the moon

– The Waterboys, The Whole of The Moon

This is Ground Control to Major Tom

You’ve really made the grade

And the papers want to know whose shirt you wear

Now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare

This is Major Tom to Ground Control

I’m stepping through the door

And I’m floating in a most peculiar way

And the stars look very different today

– David Bowie, Space Oddity

Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom

Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom

Dang a dang dang ding a dong ding

Blue Moon

– Blue Moon, The Marcels

“The fish is my friend too…I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him. I am glad we do not have to try to kill the stars. Imagine if each day a man must try to kill the moon, he thought. The moon runs away. But imagine if a man each day should have to try to kill the sun? We were born lucky; he thought”

― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

The last that ever she saw him

Carried away by a moonlight shadow

He passed on worried and warning

Carried away by a moonlight shadow

– Moonlight Shadow by Mike Oldfield

Yes, the surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.

– Neil Armstrong, 21 July 1969

Follow Robert E. Jackson for more great pictures.