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Book Review: Postcards from Mars

by Emily Lakdawalla

Click to enlarge >

Postcards from Mars
by Jim Bell
Dutton, 208 pp.
$50.00, hardcover

The history of the American frontier is blessed with a rich tradition of painters and photographers who journeyed far in search of stunning scenes of natural beauty.  George Catlin; Thomas Moran; Carleton Watkins; Albert Bierstadt -- all traveled into the western wilderness and shipped home canvases and photographic plates of scenes that captivated the imagination of city dwellers back east.  Few of those city dwellers would ever be able to make the trip themselves, but through the eyes of artists, the general public could enjoy a vicarious trip to the natural wonders of Yosemite, the broad expanses of the Great Plains, and the steep crags of the Rockies.  With Postcards from Mars, Jim Bell asserts that the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are not just robotic spacecraft, but also nature photographers in this same tradition.

Bell is the lead scientist for the Pancam color imaging system on both rovers.  The text of Postcards from Mars tells the story of preparing the spacecraft for launch and of the rovers' arrival on Mars in a conversational tone, with just the right mix of detail and personal point of view.    Bell writes that he has had a lifelong interest in landscape photography.  "I was fascinated with the interplay of light and shadow in the environment, with the way a photograph could be framed and composed, like a musical piece, to tell a story.…When I figured out how to hook up my camera to my telescope, I was hooked.  Space was the ultimate landscape."

But while Bell's text is good, providing a Mars travelogue accessible to the layman, this book is clearly all about the photographs.  This isn't a history, it's an art book.  The more than 150 images are set off on the pages in frames of white space as though on a gallery wall.  Captions are brief and unobtrusive, often printed on preceding pages to allow the images to stand on their own.  Several panoramas are displayed in their full splendor across the width of four pages in fold-out spreads.  The quality of the printing is high, reproducing intense colors, dramatic shadows, and fine details.

Although some of the images are chosen to illustrate the story that Bell tells in the text, for the most part, the connection between the text and images is loose.  For example, the book pictures Spirit under construction and launching from Earth, then shows some of the first color snaps that Spirit returned from Mars.  But as the text goes on to describe Spirit's sol 18 anomaly and the "basalt prison" of Gusev crater, the images jump to the dramatic panorama of the Tennessee Valley that Spirit captured on sol 510, midway through its ascent of the Columbia Hills.  The book's design invites the reader to consider the images separately from the story, as works of art.

Postcards from Mars doesn't just feature the rovers' panoramic images.  Bell also presents more intimate views of Mars, vignettes of rocks, sand dunes, RAT holes, and blueberries chosen for their abstract beauty.  One of my favorite images in the Spirit section is a two-page spread of the Microscopic Imager mosaic of the "Keystone" outcrop taken on sol 439.  The eye is taken in by the myriad zigzagging crenulations of weathered rock; nothing in the image provides a sense of scale, so the image keeps shifting as my eyes and brain alternately interpret it as an extreme close-up on a jagged rock or an aerial view of a fantastic alien landscape.

Click to enlarge > Microscopic Imager mosaic on "Methuselah" Spirit moved its robotic arm to 24 different positions to capture this Microscopic Imager mosaic on a target named Keystone on the rock named Methuselah on sol 439. The area pictured is approximately 18 centimeters (7 inches) across. Credit: NASA / JPL / Cornell / USGS

The Spirit and Opportunity landing sites were selected for their scientific potential and their safety for the rovers' airbag-assisted landings, not for their scenic beauty.  In fact, the landing safety requirements prevented the choice of landing sites with more dramatic landscapes, such as the interior of Valles Marineris.  The photos from Spirit and Opportunity dazzle us now as much for their strangeness as anything else.  The future of Mars surface exploration surely holds the discovery of new Grand Canyons and Yosemites, places worth visiting purely for their dazzling vistas.  In Postcards from Mars, Bell convincingly places Spirit and Opportunity as the first -- but hopefully not the last -- of a new tradition of Martian nature photographers, capturing the spirit of the Martian frontier, allowing viewers back home to experience Mars' expansive beauty through their eyes.

Emily Lakdawalla is Science and Technology Coordinator for The Planetary Society, and the author of The Planetary Society Weblog.