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Art Canadian

Through Post-Atomic Eyes

edited by Claudette Lauzon & John O'Brian

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Sep 2020
Category
Canadian, Contemporary (1945-), Art & Politics
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780228001393
    Publish Date
    Sep 2020
    List Price
    $55.00

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Description

What does it mean to live in a post-atomic world? Photography and contemporary art offer a provocative lens through which to comprehend the by-products of the atomic age, from weapons proliferation, nuclear disaster, and aerial surveillance to toxic waste disposal and climate change. Confronting cultural fallout from the dawn of the nuclear age, Through Post-Atomic Eyes addresses the myriad iterations of nuclear threat and their visual legacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Whether in the iconic black-and-white photograph of a mushroom cloud rising over Nagasaki in 1945 or in the steady stream of real-time video documenting the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, atomic culture - and our understanding of it - is inextricably constructed by the visual. This book takes the image as its starting point to address the visual inheritance of atomic anxieties; the intersection of photography, nuclear industries, and military technocultures; and the complex temporality of nuclear technologies. Contemporary artists contribute lens-based works that explore the consequences of the nuclear, and its afterlives, in the Anthropocene. Revealing, through both art and prose, startling new connections between the ongoing threat of nuclear catastrophe and current global crises, Through Post-Atomic Eyes is a richly illustrated examination of how photography shapes and is shaped by nuclear culture.

About the authors

Claudette Lauzon is an assistant professor in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.

Claudette Lauzon's profile page

John O'Brian teraches Art History at the University of British Columbia. He is author of David Milne and the Modern Tradition of Painting: The Flat Side of the Landscape and Degas to Matisse: The Maurice Wetheim Collection, and editor of Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism.

John O'Brian's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"With an interdisciplinary focus and with constant attention to environmental themes ... Through Post-Atomic Eyes bring[s] art history into dialogue with the emerging field of the energy humanities." RACAR

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