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John Angerson (b.1969 Bristol, England) started his career in the early 1990s, covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and the changing geopolitical landscape of Eastern Europe. Since then, his work has continued to explore the different languages of documentary photography, focusing on how specific communities form, shift and develop.
STS-72 mission training. Japanese mission specialist Koichi Wakata during ‘fit checking’ of his spacesuit.
In 1995, while I was working as a photographer, I had a chance meeting in Berlin with a producer who was filming a documentary on Nasa’s astronauts. I was asked to take some publicity shots, which of course I accepted.
On December 6 1995, I entered Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the same control centre that had made history with the Apollo moon landing missions in 1969.
There were six astronauts preparing for mission STS-72, where they would escape Earth on the Endeavour space shuttle with a mission to bring back a Japanese research spacecraft. Brian Duffy, a former Air Force pilot, was the mission’s commander.
Over the next month, the film crew and I travelled between the Nasa space centres in Florida and Texas on numerous budget flights. The astronauts, on the other hand, made the same commute in their personal Nasa T-38 supersonic jets. Many of the images I made were in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, a large swimming pool where the astronauts, wearing special suits, took part in complex and dangerous training exercises simulating the weightlessness that they would experience during space travel.
On launch day, members of the Closeout Crew helped the astronauts strap into the shuttle’s crew module.
My initial run of photos from the STS-72 project were used in the television listings pages in magazines and newspapers when the documentary film was released in 1996. I revisited the work again this year due to lockdown and while editing without the pressure of the original deadline, I found many images I had overlooked that are now being seen for the first time. Furthermore, while researching the mission history, I uncovered hundreds of images held at the US National Archives made in Earth’s orbit captured by the original STS-72 crew.
Twenty-five years on, reflecting on these images, I believe my access allowed me to capture a unique intimacy among the astronauts that is rarely seen.
Angerson now splits his time between shooting personal projects, teaching at various Universities and shooting features and portraiture for a range of magazines, charities and design agencies.
STS-72 published by John Angerson is available now
BOOKS:
NASA STS-72, Space Shuttle Mission, London, England. ISBN 978-1527266070 – Angerson, J. (2020)
English Journey. Leeds, England: B&W Studio. ISBN 978-1-5272-3023-1 – Angerson, J. (2019)
Love, Power, Sacrifice. Stockport: Dewi Lewis. ISBN 978-1-904587-48-4 – Angerson, J. (2007)
EXHIBITIONS:
2021. On This Day, Interphoto-21 Photography Festival, Bialystok, Poland.
2020. On This Day, Backlight Photo Festival, Finland.
2019. On This Day, Lishui Photography Festival, Lishui, China.
2019. English Journey, LOOK Photo Biennial, Liverpool, UK.
2019. Artist in Residence, Old Diorama Art centre, ‘108.71 acres’. London, UK.
2019. On This Day, Lishui Photography Festival, China.
2019. On This Day, Kaunas Photography Festival, Lithuania.
2019. On This Day, Riga Photography Festival.
2019. On This Day, Copenhagen International Photo Festival.
2019. On This Day, Format International Photography Festival.
