Joel Meter

Nobody ever accused the Apollo program of failing to deliver the goods. There were the 842 pounds of moon rocks and the raft of scientific spinoffs and the deep thrills that every one of the 11 missions delivered. And then, perhaps more than anything, there were the pictures. We are equal parts a questing species and a very visual one. We go places so that we can see what is there and we carry our cameras so we can bring home evidence of those sights. That's especially important when the destination is one that only 24 human beings out of all of the billions who have ever lived have gotten to visit. For that reason, NASA made photography a high priority during the Apollo missions, redesigning cameras that could operate in the punishing environment of space and inventing ultra-thin film that would allow a single roll to contain 200 exposures. Of the thousands of pictures taken, only a comparative few were chosen for the public to see. They were the best of the images, no surprise, and that made sense. But their very perfection sometimes made them seem almost sterile. It was the outtakes-the astronaut in the clumsy pose, the litter left on the lunar surface, the too-bright sun flaring off the lens-that revealed the missions to be the often unglamorous, often improvisational camping trips they were. Now, a team of four European designers have chosen 225 of the least seen-and in some cases least polished-of the Apollo trove and released them in a dazzling book titled "Apollo VII - XVII." The wonderfully imperfect collection provides an entirely new perspective on the flights we thought we knew.