Part fiction, part fact, The Lost Moon project is a series of photographs re-imagining and re-telling the stories of the whereabouts of some of the rocks from the Apollo Goodwill Moon Rock gift programmes of the early 1970’s. At one stage about 180 of the 270 lunar samples distributed by the Nixon Administration were either, missing, misplaced or stolen. Amongst the collection of anecdotal information on these lost, or once lost rocks you’ll find everything from unlikely heroes and greedy villains, to tragedy, triumph and even luck.

Concealed almost entirely underneath a layer of thermochromic black ink, the physicality of the photographs reflect the instibility of the subject matter; from the fragmented truth and at times deception in the lunar samples’ history, to and the general slipperiness of truth in photography, not forgetting the current political instability of the moon itself. The Lost Moon photographs reveal their complete content when heat is applied to the surface, only for it to disappear once they cool, creating works which are at once both stable and unstable.

This series was originally produced for FORMAT 15 International Photography Festival in Derby as part of a group show of alternative and historic photographic techniques.

Click on a thumbnail to find out the background story behind each missing or recovered rock fragment.