Rachele Riley – Page 3 – process and research

Tour of the Nevada Test Site.

With about twenty-five other visitors, I rode out to the Nevada Test Site on Thursday, December 13. (The Nevada Test Site now goes by the name: Nevada National Security Site.) Our full-day tour was led by Ernie Williams, a former Atomic Energy Commission employee and, at the age of 82, a participant and witness to most U.S. nuclear testing activity.

No pictures, no recording, no cellphones, no video allowed. While we drove around I noted the cable lines strewn about, the few subsidence craters I could see out the window, towers and other testing equipment that stands in ruin, the houses from the 1950s that, situated furthest from ground zero, remain as empty shells, and other evidence of experiments conducted.

We were allowed off the bus at two spots within the site: in Frenchman Flat to stand underneath a warped steel bridge (damaged by the force of an early atmospheric nuclear test), and, later that afternoon in northern Yucca Flat, where we stood at the dramatic edge to Sedan Crater. It was a rainy and snowy day with little visibility. I was a little sad to have missed the view of mountains that surround the valley. From my 2008 visit I remember the feeling of vastness in the valley, and the feeling like we were inside a place. While mountains encircle Yucca Flat and there is a natural feeling of enclosure, the fact that it is a highly restricted area probably contributes to that impression.

Sedan Crater

(Images courtesy of the University of Nevada Las Vegas Special Collections, DOE Collection.)

Nearby, at the Desert National Wildlife Refuge.

Wednesday, December 12 we drove out to the Desert National Wildlife Refuge on a windy sunny day. We returned dusty, a little sunburned, inspired. The Refuge is about 20 minutes north of Las Vegas, off Highway 95. It is a protected area of 2,300 square miles (from the brochure): ‘The wide range of elevation and rainfall has created amazingly diverse habitat suited to a wide variety of flora and fauna. The Desert Wildlife Refuge is a land of great diversity. Here the Mojave Desert ecosystem merges with the Great Basin ecosystem on this vast dry landscape.’ It is a similar environment to the Nevada Test Site, which lies just beyond, a few ranges away looking north.

The beautiful Corn Creek:

Recorded sound that day. Walked, took photos, shot video.

It was very windy but we did make a couple of solar prints of plants (that is sun print paper underneath the brush in the picture below), but I had hoped to do much more. I am applying to the Goldwell Open Air Artist Residency for the summer. There, I will be creating a series of prints based on the mannequins, the mojave desert ecology, and the architecture of the testing program.

Artifacts of Atomic Testing.

On Tuesday, December 11, I met with Jennifer Cornthwaite, Director of Emergency Arts, at Fremont and sixth to discuss exhibiting in LV, and to get insight into the arts center. I met with Karen Green afterwards at the National Atomic Testing Museum. She is Curator and Collections Director at the Museum. The National Atomic Testing Museum has a collection of artifacts from the atomic testing period, mostly from the Nevada Test Site, but growing in scope to include objects and artifacts from all of the U.S.’s testing locations. I was able to visit the exhibition quickly, and then we went upstairs to the collections room. Karen had received an anonymous donation of two 1950s era mannequins that were used in testing at the NTS, a woman and a boy. The words ‘Property of the Atomic Energy Commission Yucca Flat Range Ground Zero’ are stenciled in black on their backs. Their hair wigs are lost, but their eyes are intact. They have hand-painted glass eyes.

I have been spending time in the University of Nevada Las Vegas Special Collections library. I looked through several photographs of testing activities (from the Department of Energy) and manuscript collections from journalists and historians. I also consulted the thesis dissertation of Angela Christine Moor entitled, ‘Selling Civil Defense: The Politics and Commerce of Preparedness, 1950-1963.’ I met her at the Cahlan Research Library in 2008 as she was finishing her MA in History at UNLV.

We will be at the UNLV library one more time before we leave, on Tuesday, December 18.

Las Vegas Review Journal (UNLV Special Collections: Dorothy Dorothy 95-20)

NTS News, Vol. IX, No. 3. February, 4, 1966 (UNLV Special Collections: Edward Halligan T84)

Images courtesy of the UNLV Special Collections (Department of Energy 0282 Collection):

In the meadows.

I am in Las Vegas, Nevada for ten days (I arrived Sunday, December 9, 2012). On the first morning, Monday, December 10, I met with curator and historian, Brian Paco Alvarez, and filmmaker and producer, Dan Garrison, at The Beat café in the Emergency Arts Center in downtown Las Vegas (Fremont and 6th). It is in the former J.C. Penney building, the store which donated clothing for Federal Civil Defense Administration tests at the Nevada Test Site in the early 1950s, and the site where the L.A. Darling mannequins, who experienced the force of nuclear blasts, were put on display for public viewing.

Emergency Arts, the former J.C. Penney building:

We discussed ‘The Evolution of Silence’ and the possibility for its premiere as an exhibition here in LV. Paco is working to establish historic designation for the former J.C. Penney building in downtown Las Vegas because of its role in the history of the Nevada Test Site.

I spent the afternoon at the Nevada State Museum Cahlan Research Library, looking at photographs, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, maps, and publications from various collections. I am returning tomorrow to finish looking at the clippings in the Patricia Lee collection and to search the Las Vegas Sun and the Las Vegas Review Journal newspapers from 1953 on microfilm for pictures and articles about the mannequins on display.

Mannequins on display, before the ‘Annie’ nuclear test of March 17, 1953 (from the Las Vegas Review Journal, March 6, 1953):

Mannequins being organized, after the ‘Annie’ test:

Expressive scans of drawings.

Here is a selection of recent experiments and interpretations of the cables that lie around the NTS. I have several drawings that have already been incorporated into the web-based archive and I am trying to find other ways to evoke landscape and the ruins of nuclear testing through line and space. The little handheld scanner I use allows me to ‘draw’ as I capture; recorded is the new ‘drawing’ which re-interprets fragments of the original drawing. Each scanning event involves gesture and movement, and the unknown. It is always a surprise to see how the original drawing is transformed.

Drawing with a scanner is a new expressive approach for me that came out of my workshop week at Design Inquiry/Design City: Berlin this past August. Special thanks to Florian Sametinger and the Design Research Lab for the opportunity to continue this visual experiment.

Over the last week I have been preparing my research goals and itinerary for an upcoming trip to Nevada. I will be visiting and meeting people from the Nevada State Museum’s Cahlan Research Library, the University of Nevada Las Vegas Library and Special Collections, the Springs Preserve, the Atomic Testing Museum, the Las Vegas News Bureau, the Emergency Arts Center, the National Desert Wildlife Range, and the Nevada Test Site.

Aerial photographs acquired from the USGS, the Freedom of Information Act.

In June 2011, I discovered that the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Mercury Core Library and Data Center in Henderson, NV stores ‘pre’ and ‘post’ detonation photographs of many nuclear tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site. I immediately inquired if I could have access to the photos of Yucca Flat for my project. After encountering resistance to my inquiry, I filed a Freedom of Information Act Request with the National Nuclear Security Administration (in March 2012), and I am happy to say that it is finally successful. I received all the images in the mail recently: several dozens of black-and-white aerial shots that were scanned and burned to nine discs for me. I want to thank all the people at the USGS and at the NNSA Office of Public Affairs who worked to fulfill my request.

Here are a few examples:
(Images courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration, Nevada Site Office.)

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Research at the National Archives, ‘Pathway to Peace’ exhibit and presentation.

Looking through the declassified military files entitled ‘General Records Relating to Disarmament, compiled 1948–1962,’ I came upon two interesting exhibition projects. There were two folders dedicated to the ‘Pathway for Peace’ exhibit, which, from what I could tell, was a presentation to the United Nations (given by the U.S.). It then traveled around the country as a means to educate Americans on a changing attitude toward the U.S. nuclear program. There were twenty color positive reproductions of the exhibit panels, designed by The Displayers from year 1957. There were also several printed versions of a lecture text that accompanied the slide presentation, marked with editorial comments. I made a copy of the final text. I plan to record it and incorporate it into the project.

(Images courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

The third folder in the box was a collection of material that explained technical advances in aerial photography and the role of reconnaissance in inspection. There were a few aerial photographs of the U.S. (not one of Yucca Flat unfortunately, but more on that later) and diagrams of airplanes outfitted to capture images of the landscape in a continuous strip, as the plane travels. In light of my recent Imagery Grant from the GeoEye Foundation and the way I am using satellite images in my project to bypass restrictions, I realize that our desire to see the world from above and to make use of that information has only intensified.

Research at the National Archives, nuclear detonations and craters.

These images represent just a fraction of the photographs housed at the Archives. Documentation of nuclear testing activity is stored in multiple collections. I poured through the Records of the Department of Energy, the Records of the Defense Nuclear Agency, and the Records of the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency. I will be returning to also consult the Records of the Atomic Energy Commission and to scan a few hundred images for use in my project. I’d like to thank researcher, Kevin Morrow, who generously made a few scans for me one day. Most researchers have brought a flatbed scanner or a tripod and SLR to the Archives. I made note of folders and images, and took quick shots with my phone. I will capture them properly when I return. (Images courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

Notice the valley floor, no craters exist at the time of this early shot.

This is the March 17, 1953 Annie Test, the one in which the first round of mannequins played the role of human subjects.

Sedan Crater, Plowshare Program—excavation experiment, July 6, 1962.

“The Plowshare program, begun in 1958, sought to develop peaceful uses for nuclear explosives. The excavation tests, designed to demonstrate that nuclear devices could quickly and cheaply move massive amounts of earth in the digging of canals and harbors, were conducted at the test site. Most spectacular was the 1962 Sedan test. Buried 635 feet below ground…the 104-kiloton blast lifted a huge dome of earth 290 feet in the air, moved 6.5 million cubic yards of earth and rock, and left a crater 1,200 feet across and 320 feet deep.

Sedan also sent a cloud of radioactivity off in the direction of Salt Lake City, creating a brief scare when radioactive iodine-131 turned up in the local milk supply. Inability to totally contain the radioactivity coupled with disappointing results eventually signaled the death knell of the program in the mid-1970’s.”
(Fehner, Terrence R. and Gosling, F.G. Origins of the Nevada Test Site. United States Department of Energy. December 2000. pp.84.)

Notice the man standing at the bottom of the crater. This gives a sense of scale (bottom left corner of photo).

Sedan Crater

Research at the National Archives, Mannequins and real people.

The more I search for details on the mannequins the more the realities begin to blur. Coordinated operations, in which mannequins were carefully dressed and typical social and domestic scenes were staged, began as isolated test scenarios at the Nevada Test Site in 1953. Extending beyond the boundaries of the NTS across the nation, their story culminates in Operation Alert, in which responses to nuclear attack were simulated by real individuals. Here are few images of mannequins and real people:

(Images courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

Research at the National Archives, Annie Test Mannequins.

I have been doing research at the National Archives facility in College Park, MD for the last three days. I looked at hundreds of archival documents: photographs, moving pictures, slides, and textual records that relate to nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site, the Department of Energy, and the Federal Civil Defense Administration. In particular I am searching for any image of the L.A. Darling Co. Mannequins used in the early tests of the 1950’s and documentation of the activities that were carried out in preparation for measuring and assessing the effects of nuclear weapons. I have yet to find evidence of the nationwide tour that the mannequins are supposed to have taken after withstanding the nuclear blast of March 17, 1953.

I requested over 35 boxes of archival records at the Archives and was able to capture reference shots of the material. I will be returning to the Archives to scan the most important findings. Special thanks to my research assistant, Millie Riley.

Here are few images of mannequins used in the 1953 Annie Test that were new to me:
(Images courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)
Before the test, the mannequins are gathered for a photo shoot:

Sometimes I find it hard to tell who is alive and who is a mannequin:

A lean-to shelter installed in a house at the Nevada Test Site:

I will be posting a few installments of examples from my visit: more images of mannequins (1953/1955), early views of Yucca Flat valley, documentation of detonations, and information on the traveling exhibit ‘Pathway to Peace.’