Ralph Theodore Morse (October 23, 1917 – December 7, 2014) was a career staff photographer for
Life magazine known for his inventive mind and his creative style. Encyclopedias and history books abound with his photos, as he photographed some of the most widely seen pictures of World War II, the United States space program, and sports events. He was most celebrated for his multiple-exposure photographs. Morse's success as an improviser led to his being consideredLife magazine's specialist in technical photography. Former managing editor George P. Hunt declared that "If [the] equipment he needed didn't exist, [Morse] built it."
Morse photographed the
NASA space program from its inception, an assignment which outlasted Life as a weekly magazine. On November 6, 2009 LIFE.com unveiled a photo retrospective of
Project Mercury, America's first human spaceflight program. Most of this photo collection is credited to Morse, as he had been exclusively assigned by Life to cover the space program. Over the early decades of the space program, Morse became an insider at NASA, providing him with the privileged access which helped produce some of the most iconic images of NASA projects. On July 15, 2009, LIFE.com published a photo gallery of never-before-seen photos Morse took of
Buzz Aldrin,
Michael Collins, and
Neil Armstrong in the days before their
Apollo mission. In the gallery,
Morse talks with Lifeabout
Apollo 11 and the astronauts who first landed on the moon.
