Double-Take: Seeing Moana-Oceanic Cold War Nuclear Testing Radioactive Residue in Julian Charrière’s Photographs
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Membrana Institute
Abstract
To photographically and filmically represent ionizing radiation, from the detonation of nuclear weapons, is a notoriously difficult process. Radiation has no tangible visibility; it literally defies vision. Despite this difficulty, photography and film held significant roles within the Cold War Nuclear Arms Race. Participating states used images to control public perception of nuclear weaponry and the military industrial complexes that supported their development. The most ubiquitous of these images is the sublime mushroom cloud. This article consciously resists this type of spectacular photographic imagery and questions how to ethically witness and represent, specifically, United States nuclear weapons testing across unceded parts of Moana-Oceania. Focusing on artist Julian Charrière’s photographic artworks from his series First Light (2016), I explore his methods of using photographic emulsion to materially record the remnants of ionising radiation that continues to impact this region’s people, oceans and lands as a result of the U.S. testing programme dubbed Operation Crossroads. There is a focus on how the physical matter of an image capturing device is able to materially witness, and thereby “see”, external events. Methodologically framed via artist and theorist Susan Schuppli’s conception of material witnessing, I argue for forms of politicised witnessing that move beyond visibility; instead, quantifiable evidence of the nuclear is physically embedded in the image.Description
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Membrana – Journal of Photography, Theory and Visual Culture, ISSN: 2463-8501 (Print); 2712-4894 (Online), Membrana Institute, 8(2). doi: 10.47659/mj-v8n2id145
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