Before there was Photoshop, there was the back of the photograph. The white space on the back of a photo is where newspaper editors would scribble notes about how to crop an image or where to place it in the article; it's where newswires would often paste or type a caption, thus assuring that the text could not be separated from the image it described.
A series of works by German photographer Thomas Ruff brings those back-of-the-photograph scribblings to the front. Using mostly spaceflight-related newspaper images from the middle of the 20th century, Ruff used digital tools to make it look as though the markings from the back had been placed on the front. In one piece, a space traveler's helmet is marked with an Associated Press stamp; in another, an editor's notes, written in red pencil, make an arc across the sky above a rocket that looks poised to launch.
The new images are aesthetically striking, and they also reveal more about the history of these images than the front of the photos could do alone. With the addition of the editors' scribblings, the images remind viewers not only of the early days of the space race, but of the people who were reporting on it, who kept the world informed. It's a project that probably could have been done with press images that were not related to spaceflight, but the combination brings up a discussion about the history of space and photography.
The aesthetic appeal of Ruff's photo collages is, of course, entirely subjective—I happen to think they're quite lovely. The black-and-white images that Ruff chose all seem to show moments of calm that come between moments of intense action in spaceflight: There's the quiet surface of the moon passing below a spacecraft; a rocket not yet ready to launch. They work well as photo collage backgrounds.
I know it's more than just the aesthetic beauty that I'm personally responding to. I am a space reporter, and the writing and markings on these images were made by my occupational ancestors. I can imagine all too well the panicked atmosphere that might have surrounded them as they quickly scrawled on the back of photographs, making urgent decisions about how best to tell these stories. These editors worked hard to make themselves invisible, to let the stories stand on their own, but Ruff has brought them out into the spotlight.