Through Post-Atomic Eyes brings together an interdisciplinary group of artists and scholars to explore the complex legacy of the atomic age in contemporary art and culture. In what ways do photography and other lens-based art practices shed light on this legacy in the 21st century, and how has atomic culture shaped contemporary intersections of photography, nuclear industries, and military techno-cultures? Join us as we explore some of the most urgent issues of our time, from climate change and the Anthropocene to surveillance culture and the advent of drone warfare, through a post-atomic lens.

Several members of the Atomic Photographers Guild are a part of “Camera Atomica” at the Art Gallery of Ontario from July 8 – November 15, 2015.

Photographs have played a crucial role in shaping perceptions of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. Camera Atomica — guest-curated by writer, curator and art historian John O’Brian — is the first substantial exhibition of nuclear photography to encompass the entire postwar period from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011.

The election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980 accompanied an intensification of the Cold War, and artists and photographers responded in large numbers to the escalating risk of a nuclear confrontation. The politics of the Cold War also coincided with a cultural debate around photography and its claims to represent what is “true” or “real.” Much post-1980 nuclear photography reflects altered understandings of the limitations of photography and the dangers of the nuclear arms race.

Camera Atomica addresses pressing issues in the post-war era – nuclear weapons proliferation, toxic waste disposal and climate change – as they are represented in photography. Organized thematically, it brings together vintage and contemporary photographs, press and fine arts photographs, scientific and touristic images and advertisements and propaganda from a wide range of sources. A discussion room, designed to evoke a fallout shelter, concludes the exhibition, replete with posters, articles and details about local engagement with atomic energy.

Beginning with Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of the X-ray in 1895, the exhibition includes more than 200 works, including an installation by Ken + Julia Yonetani, Ken Domon and Shomei Tomatsu’s photographs of hibakusha (survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), David McMillan’s photographs at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and Sandy Skoglund’s darkly humorous Radioactive Cats, as well as works by Nancy Burson, Edward Burtynsky, Philippe Chancel, Carol Condé and Karl Beveridge, Bruce Conner, Robert Del Tredici, Carole Gallagher, Blake Fitzpatrick, Kenji Higuchi, Michael Light, Dean Loomis, Richard Misrach, Ishiuchi Miyako, Barbara Norfleet, Andrea Pinheiro, Shimpei Takeda, Donald Weber, Garry Winogrand and official U.S. Army and press photographs from the AGO’s collection. Also featured is a recently acquired work by James Welling, from his series The Glass House.

This exhibition is included with general admission.

Organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario.

A 304-page soft-cover catalogue accompanies the exhibition and will be for sale in shopAGO. Co-published by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Black Dog Press, Camera Atomica includes more than 250 illustrations as well as essays by John O’Brian, Hiromitsu Toyosaki, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Blake Fitzpatrick, Susan Schuppli, Iain Boal, Gene Ray and Douglas Coupland

Atomic photographer, Jessie Boylan (Australia), has just had her essay ‘Atomic Amnesia: photographs and nuclear memory’ published in the Journal of Global Change, Peace and Security. This paper addresses the ways in which photography can illuminate that which is unfathomable, such as nuclear catastrophe. It discusses how chronicling the nuclear era through art can allow us to break free of our atomic amnesia and urge us to imagine possible alternative futures free of nuclear disaster. It examines the ways in which members of the Atomic Photographers Guild have sharply focused on all aspects of the nuclear age and its fallout.

Link: Atomic Amnesia: photographs and nuclear memory

Atomic Photographer Carole Gallagher has made Counterpunch’s best 100 Non-Fiction books of the 20th century list with her book American Ground Zero, The Secret Nuclear War

See the list here: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/04/100-best-non-fiction-books-of-the-20th-century-and-beyond-in-english/

American Ground Zero book cover

by ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

As the clock clicked down on the arrival of the new millennium, Alex and I were bemused at the spate of “100 best of the century lists” pouring forth from the New York Times, the New Yorker, Salon, the Guardian and other liberal publications. The lists were predictable and not many of the entries remained on our groaning shelves. So we decided to compile our own catalogue of the best books written in English and, later translated into English, during the 20^th Century. We spent weeks whittling it down to roughly 100 titles for each. These became reading lists for like-minded CounterPunchers and proved two of the most popular pieces we’d ever run on the website, even pricking the interest of many librarians who were forced to confront the gaps in their own collections.

Over the decade, those pages were up on the site they attracted well-over two million unique visitors. Then disaster struck. During the Great Transformation of the CounterPunch website to a Word Press platform, those lists were mangled beyond recognition. I remember calling Alex and telling him to cautiously look at the wreckage. He clicked on the page, gasped and even sniffled a bit. “It’s the burning of the Alex…andria library all over again!” he quipped. Neither of us had the energy to recreate the lost pages.

Since then we’ve received many pleas to resurrect those lists, the most recent coming from an old pal of ours whose book had earned a spot in the top 100. Finally, I relented.  I spent the last couple of weeks reviewing the entries and some old email exchanges with Alex about books that we both admired, which had been published in the intervening years. So we now present once again our 100 best non-fiction books published in English in the 20^th century (with a few important additions), along with the introduction we wrote for our book Serpents in the Garden. (The translated books will follow.)

Jeffrey St. Clair

Atomic Photographer James Lerager is part of an exhibition on at BC Space in Laguna Beach, CA, called “SILENT BUT DEADLY : CHERNOBYL-FUKUSHIMA-SAN ONOFRE”.

James Lerager has been photographing and documenting nuclear sites since the 1980s. His work has been widely exhibited and published. He is the photographer / author of the book “In the Shadow of the Cloud: Photographs & Histories of America’s Atomic Veterans” and several monographs. James Lerager’s forthcoming book – a global perspective on the human and environmental consequences of the nuclear age – is currently in preparation.

When San Onofre’s nuclear plant closed last summer, many breathed a sigh of relief. Yet San Onofre still requires a multi-decade ‘decommissioning,’ with radioactive fuel and components carted away to uncertain disposal, at further expense measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. Who profits and who pays is in dispute.

When the Chernobyl reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, the Soviet government initially kept it secret. Some 600,000 workers and soldiers were ordered to build the now crumbling Sarcophagus. Estimates of excess Chernobyl cancers range into the 100s of thousands, and the region will remain contaminated for 100s of years.

When the Fukushima nuclear power plant was overwhelmed by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, three reactors melted down and Japan’s Prime Minister considered ordering the evacuation of Tokyo, which could have displaced tens of millions of people.

Some 400 commercial nuclear power reactors are operational around the world, 100 of them in the United States. The true costs of the nuclear era are largely unknown and generally suppressed. The unanswered question is whether or not we will continue to allow our leaders to drag us along a path toward a permanent nuclear dependency, with all its uncertainty and risks.

Dates: Febuary 25 – April 26, 2014

Artist’s Reception : Thursday Feb 27 : 7 pm

FEATURING : James Lerager : Jun Hori : Kei Kobayashi
ADDITIONAL WORK BY  : Ed Heckerman : Ron Azevedo

Film Screening : March 11 : Metamorphosis by Jun Hori : 7 pm
(3rd Anniversary of the 2011 Earthquake & Tsunami)

See more about this show here.