Making of AS11-40-5878 (by Edwin Aldrin, 1969)

Cortis and Sonderegger’s Icons series is a sharply funny exploration of truth and illusion in photography and its relation to cultural memory. Following in the footsteps of another mischievous Swiss duo, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, the artists build painstakingly accurate models of famous photographs and then rephotograph them with the camera pulled back to reveal the tools of their artifice. In Making of AS11-40-5878 (by Edwin Aldrin), a square pile of gray dust bears the recognizable mark of a boot print left on the lunar surface. Strewn around that familiar composition are paintbrushes, a saw, bags of cement, and a print of astronaut Buzz Aldrin's original photograph. By playfully revealing the artifice behind the art, the image nods to the conspiracy theory that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked in a Holly wood studio (possibly under the direction of Stanley Kubrick) so that the United States could claim to have won the space race.