This Fall I am returning to my image research, writing, mapping, and art making connected to the Nevada Test Site and the LA Darling mannequins. The LA Darling display mannequins (introduced here in earlier posts) were used in the 1953 and 1955 civil defense nuclear detonation operations at Yucca Flat. I have experimented with some of the imagery over the years and my goal now is to visualize and reflect on the presence, outfitting, damage, and representation / identity of each mannequin used in the detonations, and their connection to realities and concerns in the world of actual people, places, and environments. I am researching the use of these captured images of before-and-after-detonation bodies and scenarios in the publications and exhibitions of the time, and am thinking about all who were excluded then and why, stories of resistance to civil defense stylizations and exercises, and what it means and how it can be expressed now.

I spent the last few weeks researching heavily into the image systems of government and commercial photography and technologies. I learned about the histories of Associated Press and International News Photo (the latter now part of Getty Images); of respective forms of Wirephoto & Soundphoto (and Telephoto) which are early forms of a faxed image. In the 1990s my friend and I would exchange faxes daily so this was personally interesting to me. As a young adult, I worked at The Image Bank, a stock photography company (now also part of Getty Images), and  I am interested in the relationships of images to publics, the material qualities of original and retouched images, the network of how images are created and sold for use in editorial works, and how this creates a mainstream distribution and an ubiquity of images, which maintains a general narrative. Commercial realms and museum collections exert control over access to images in their holdings. I have found a few examples of counterpart images depicting some of the exact same moments at slightly different angles and made by government groups like the Signal Corps and the Lookout Mountain Lab, and thus mostly preserved in the National Archives where anyone can see them and use them.

The use of images to incite fear and to push conforming ideas of society on the American public of the 1950s is of interest. I am interested in the textiles which were described in detail in JC Penney advertisements and the fashion promoted. In noting whose representation is missing from these staged scenes of nuclear disaster—I am thinking about those not considered or depicted, I reflect on their identities and needs, and what it says about who was in charge of these programs at the time, and how the power of the image resonates.

INP Soundphoto logo pictured below in a screenshot of the backside of a photograph, shown  here for the logomark only:

A screenshot of the National Archives catalog example. There are some digitized images available online:

When I am browsing the National Archives online catalog searching for Nevada Test Site images of the 1950s—I also search through the scans of the shelflist log cards for that time period. The cards are type-written textual descriptions of the photos taken, and the photos may or may not be in the Archives’ holdings. It’s a vague experience, because many locations are grouped together—so I “traveled” via these text cards to a wide array of US government activities being photographed across the world: Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Nevada, Arkansas, California, Germany, etc. Below is an example card about silk weaving in Japan.

Here are three articles and books I read recently. I am grateful for the important perspectives and research in them; they articulate well the problems I feel when confronting these images and histories. I will continue to consult these and also am reading the books and articles these authors refer to—and will share thoughts in future posts:

I wish to thank the University of North Carolina Greensboro for granting me a research leave this year to focus on my creative research. I am working on an artist book to bring the materials, expressions, and thoughts connected to The Evolution of Silence project into printed form. More details to come.