Photographer’s Statement
Art is an inevitable consequence of being human, even in space.

I picked up my first camera, a Kodak Brownie, in 6th grade when I was eleven. I used my camera to explore and record my techno adventures. In the years since, I haven’t stopped for one day—I continue exploring, recording, discovering and sharing images of the world as I see it.

I bring photography into whatever technical discipline I do. Whether it’s amateur astronomy, high-speed photography, photomicroscopy, macro photography; and of course on orbit, photography has always found a way to be a part of my life and my career.

Frontiers are all around us. There are frontiers under the stage of a microscope, through the eyepiece of a telescope, in the stratosphere, and at the bottom of the ocean. My frontier is space.

As an explorer, you are obligated to describe your experiences and discoveries to those who didn’t have the opportunity to go on that exploration with you. Space is no different. 

On Space Station during my missions, we had a variety of still and video cameras, and we were encouraged to take as many pictures and as much video as we could, and share the stories and the imagery with everybody on our planet. 

Portraits of a Planet: Photographer in Space features 40 of my photographs selected from more than 500,000 frames taken on my 3 spaceflights.  This exhibition also features 3 mural-scaled images to inspire visitors with the sense of wonder that I experienced while on orbit.  

Donald R. Pettit is a NASA astronaut, a  veteran of three spaceflights, with more than 370 days in space.