About the Book
Wernher von Braun was a man with star dust in his eyes, but blood on his hands. Today he is best remembered as the designer of the Saturn V rockets which carried men to the moon in 1969. But before this, he designed weapons for the military of Nazi Germany, including the first ballistic missile, the V-2.
The V-2 was an indiscriminate terror weapon, which killed thousands of civilians in cities across Europe, and which thousands of slave labourers died to produce in the hellish conditions of an underground factory in central Germany.
My project asks; how was it possible for a man who had witnessed the holocaust first hand, and designed weapons intended to safeguard Nazi rule, to end up at NASA in the United States, building rockets intended for the peaceful scientific exploration of space?
The book Depravity’s Rainbow is due for publication later in 2022, on the eightieth anniversary of the first successful V-2 rocket flight, and the fiftieth anniversary of humankind’s last visit to the moon. The book combines my own photographs of key sites in the history of rocketry, many of which are today largely abandoned and forgotten, alongside archival imagery made to document the V2 and Apollo rocket projects. Lewis Bush
-> Further information: https://shop.lewisbush.com/product/depravitys-rainbow-photo-book/
About the Artist
Lewis Bush is a photographer, writer and researcher. Since 2012 his practice has explored issues ranging from the aggressive redevelopment of London, to the systemic inequalities of the art world. Recent works include Shadows of the State, which examines the democratic deficit of intelligence gathering, and Metropole, which uncovers the damaging effects of international property development.
He is currently working on a long-term project about computer vision which runs in parallel with an ESRC funded PhD at the London School of Economics and is also course leader of MA documentary photography at London College of Communication.