print, photography
landscape
photography
post-internet
history-painting
modernism
Dimensions height 120 mm, width 235 mm
This photo of the Atomic Bomb Test during Operation Crossroads shows a cataclysmic event, documented by Army-Navy Task Force One. Imagine the photographer, standing there, on what I presume was once a pristine beach, framing this mushroom cloud. Think about the kind of precision it takes to capture the magnitude of such a destructive force, the light, the scale… It is beyond comprehension. The billowing cloud, a form that’s both terrifying and weirdly beautiful, hangs ominously over the palm trees. I am sure the sand will melt into glass with this kind of heat. The water is so still, so calm. And here we are, years later, looking at this image. How do we make sense of it? Does the act of witnessing this event change our understanding of the world?
Comments
Between 1946 and 1958 the United States experimented with nuclear weapons on Bikini Island in the Pacific. On 25 July 1946 an atomic bomb was exploded underwater along the coast. These images were printed in large format in Life magazine, with the caption: ‘It was perhaps the most awesome man-made spectacle ever photographed.’ These photographs allowed the public at large to see the destructive power of the atomic bomb for the first time.
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