One Giant Leap for Mankind: Vintage Photographs from the Victor Martin-Malburet Collection 
28 October 2022
One Giant Leap for Mankind: Vintage Photographs from the Victor Martin-Malburet Collection 
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The first Original Seven Mercury astronauts wearing their first pressure spacesuits, Ralph Morse [Project Mercury], July 1960

printed 1962
vintage chromogenic print on fiber-based Kodak paper 10 h × 8 w in (25 × 20 cm)
estimate: $2,000–3,000
result: $750
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A stunning color portrait of the Mercury Seven by Ralph Morse for LIFE magazine. "The Seven" personified the Thomas Wolfe–coined term, “the Right Stuff.” Front row, from left to right: Walter Schirra, Donald "Deke" Slayton, John Glenn, and Scott Carpenter; back row,from left to right: Alan Shepard, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, and Gordon Cooper.
Numbered to upper margin 'NASA S-62-8774'. Watermarks to verso 'A Kodak paper'.

note: Media visuals referencing the original NASA photograph(s) not included.
literature: LIFE, 1 August 1960, pg. 37

print
LIFE, 1 August 1960, pg. 37

This very famous photograph of the astronauts wearing their new Mercury silver pressure spacesuits was made at Langley Air Force Base by long-time Life photographer Ralph Morse, a man who spent so much time with the Mercury Seven (and with the Gemini and Apollo crews as well) that John Glenn himself fondly dubbed him “the eighth astronaut.”

Although the agency viewed Project Mercury’s purpose as an experiment to determine whether humans could survive space travel, the original seven astronauts immediately became national heroes and were compared by TIME magazine to “Columbus, Magellan, Daniel Boone, and the Wright brothers”.

Read more: The Right Stuff: When America Met the Mercury Astronauts by Ben Cosgrove.

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