elin o’Hara slavick is a Distinguished Professor of Visual Art, Theory and Practice at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – where she started the photography program in 1994. She received her MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA from Sarah Lawrence College. Slavick has exhibited her work internationally and across the United States. She is the author of Bomb After Bomb: A Violent Cartography, (Charta, 2007), with a foreword by Howard Zinn, essay by Carol Mavor and an interview by Catherine Lutz. Since 2008, her work has focused on “the nuclear” – Hiroshima, the A-Bomb, radioactivity, the aftermath and more recently, Nagasaki and Fukushima. After Hiroshima, a monograph of cyanotypes of A-Bombed artifacts from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and silver gelatin contact prints of rubbings of A-Bombed surfaces, was published in 2013 with Daylight Books with an essay by James Elkins. After Hiroshima has been exhibited at the Former Bank of Japan (an A-Bombed building) and gallery G in Hiroshima, Vacant Space in Tokyo, and in many other venues internationally. In summer 2016, slavick will make a site-specific cyanotype installation in an abandoned school in Fukushima (abandoned as a result of the Tsunami and subsequent Dai’ichi nuclear catastrophe). She is also a curator, critic and activist. She grew up in Maine in an activist family, marching against war, organizing against nuclear power and standing in Portland’s main square every August 6 to remember Hiroshima.
Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, “Massive firing range that for 50 years was the US Army testing ground for some of the most lethal, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons ever made. A slope of mountains to the east is pockmarked with hundreds of fortified bunkers storing enough toxins to eradicate mankind. Ground water is fouled with carcinogens. This was where the cold war was waged, not in battlefields in foreign lands, but n factories, laboratories and testing ranges." - Tony Freemantle, Houston ChronicleAlamagordo, We Are Our Own Enemy, first atomic explosion, Alamogordo, New Mexico, 1945, Los Alamos National Lab Archives, from Atomic Spaces, fig. 43Hypocenter in Hiroshima, 1945Vieques, Vieques Island, Puerto Rico, (alongside the southeast shore, accessible only by special permission from U.S. Navy). On April 19, 1999 an errant 500-lb. U.S. bomb kills David Sares Rodriguez, a 35-year-old security guard. 267 depleted uranium-tipped bombs have been illegally fired. The U.S. has been dropping bombs on the island of Vieques for 5 decades.http://atomic.gordonbelray.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/baghdad.jpghttp://atomic.gordonbelray.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/amchitka.jpgEnewetak, Enewetak Atoll, 1948 - Operation Sandstone, 1951 - Operation Greenhouse, 1952 - Ivy Mike Test (first thermonuclear test, 4th largest of the 67 tests conducted in the Marshall Islands), 1954 - Operation Castle, 1956 - Operation Redwing, 1958 - Operation Hardtack I, - each Operation had many tests.Nevada, Proving Ground, 1951-1992, Northwest of Las Vegas, over 900 atomic explosives were detonated in the desert. Operation Ranger was the 1st atomic test on January 27, 1951. Operation Divider was the "last" atomic test on September 23, 1992. 100 above ground and 800 below ground tests in all.Nevada Test Site, Area 20, Project Schooner (part of Project Plowshare), 35 Kilotons, December 1968. "Schooner bomb crater and football field. Project Plowshare was pursued for 15 years, including 30 experimental peaceful nuclear explosions." from "Peaceful Nuclear Explosions and the Geography of Scientific Authority," by Scott KirschBoken Island, Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands, "A 1978 photo shows the crater from an atomic test at Boken Island. Americans still shape the destiny of places like Kwajelein Atoll. Several times a year, these tiny Pacific islands witness a light show more spectacular than almost any offered by nature, when a gaggle of ballistic missiles, minus their warheads, streak in low, roaring through the night sky and hurtle into the nearby lagoon. The U.S. won control of the Marshall Islands' 29 atolls (1,125 low-lying coral islands) from Japan in 1944 during the bitterly fought Pacific campaign." NY Times, June 11, 2001.Paper Bomber Plane with a Peace Crane, Swords Into Plowshares, made + given by an A-Bomb Survivor, Hiroshima, japan, 2008A-Bombed Building, closed Ugina Police Station, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008A-Bombed Tree, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Second Generation of an A-Bombed Bamboo Grove, Shukeien Garden, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Hiroshima Basement, where Mr. Nomura Euzo survived the A-Bomb because he went down to retrieve paperwork, Japan, 2008A-Bombed Eucalyptus Tree, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Bridge Foundation, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Atomic Mask, cyanotype (sunprint) of a fragment of a steel beam from the A-Bomb Peace Dome, from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum archives, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Hair Comb, cynaotype of an A-Bombed artifact from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Hiroshma, Japan, 2008Hiroshima Flowers, cyanotype of dead Hiroshima flowers, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008A-Bombed Bottle, cyanotype of bottle from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum archives, whatever was inside of the bottle at the time of the bombing carbonized into a black lump that is visually tanslated as a white lump, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008A-Bombed Bottle, cyanotype of a melted A-Bombed bottle from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum archives, Japan, 2008Atomic Spill. cyanotype of a melted A-Bombed steel fragment from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum archives, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Leaf from a Second Generation A-Bombed Chinese Parasol Tree, silver gelatin contact print from a rubbing of the leaf, Hiroshima, Japan, 2009A-Bombed Bank Floor, silver gelatin contact print of a rubbing of the floor of an A-Bombed Bank, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Koko Bridge in the Shukkeien Garden, Hiroshima, Japan, silver gelatin contact prints of rubbings of the A-Bombed pedestrian bridge, 2008Survival Door, silver gelatin contact print of a rubbing of the door in the basement where a man survived the A-Bomb, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Hiroshima Tree, silver gelatin contact print of a rubbing of an A-Bombed Tree, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Hiroshima Tree, silver gelatin contact print of a rubbing of an A-Bombed Tree, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008Lingering Radiation, silver gelatin contact print of an autoradiograph (x-ray film exposed by radiation) of a fragment of an A-Bombed tree stump, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008World Map, Protesting Cartography: Places the United States has Bombed, 2002-ongoing, with pins marking each bombed site for which there is a corresponding drawingAfghanistan I, In August 1998, the U.S. announced “Infinite Reach,” anti-terrorist missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan and the Sudan. 75-100 missiles were launched, leaving 21 dead and 50 wounded. According to William Blum, “The repression of women in Afghanistan by the Taliban is well known. Much less publicized is that from the 1970s to the 80s Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the underdeveloped country into the 20th century, including giving women equal rights. The U.S. however, poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government in a proxy war against the Soviet Union. In the end, the U.S. and the Taliban “won,” and the women and the rest of Afghanistan, lost: More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population."
