Detail View: Artists' Book Collection: The Apollo Prophecies

Title: 
The Apollo Prophecies
Creator: 
Kahn, Nicholas, 1964-
Description: 
"The Apollo Prophecies" depicts, in one extravagantly long tritone panorama, an imagined expedition of 1960s American astronauts who land on the moon and discover a lost mission of Edwardian-era astronauts who greet them as long-awaited gods. These wildly inventive staged photographs, evidence of events that never happened, playfully question the role of photography in our sense of historical truth. Equal parts Jules Verne and Stanley Kubrick, with a touch of William Blake, the panoramic moonscape literally unfolds in multiple episodes that intermingle artifacts from the fearless era of early-twentieth-century exploration with space age gadgetry. Kahn and Selesnick have combined real-life locations, miniature models and full-scale props of their own devising to produce a dramatic narrative where space-suit-clad astronauts (most portrayed by the artists themselves, with a few similarly clad monkeys and elephants) reappear as events continue across the page. This is an Apollo lunar mission at once dreamlike, oddly familiar and utterly convincing. Its ingenious package includes the 19-foot long two-sided panorama, (58 pages when folded) and a 12-page booklet whose mind-bending narrative is illustrated with four-color mixed-media drawings. The limited edition also includes a signed and numbered lenticular image in an edition of 250 copies (viewed from one angle, it reveals an austronaut from the Edwardian era, from the other it shows an austronaut from the sixties) and a twenty-minute DVD documenting the munar mision.
Subject: 
Black-and-white photography
Subject: 
Fantasy in art
Subject: 
Landscapes in art
Subject: 
Narrative art
Subject: 
Outer space
Subject: 
Photography
Subject: 
Surrealism
Publisher: 
Aperture
Date: 
2006
Language: 
English
Type: 
Still Image
Extent: 
2 parts : photographs ; 27 cm
Format/Medium: 
Artists' books
Format/Medium: 
Accordion fold books
Format/Medium: 
Digital prints
Format/Medium: 
Hardcover books
Format/Medium: 
Photographs
Format/Medium: 
Slipcases
Source: 
The Apollo Prophecies, in Jen Library Archives and Special Collections, Savannah College of Art and Design.
Relation: 
Catalog record: https://library.scad.edu/record=b1234896
Rights: 
Copyright is retained by the authors or artists of items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.
Identifier: 
b1234896x
Identifier: 
i11659099
SCAD Location: 
Jen Library (Savannah)
SCAD Location: 
SCAD Library (Atlanta)