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Do IT this week: Layering
Akron Art Museum showcases images made by Japanese-American
By Dorothy Shinn
Beacon Journal art and architecture critic
Published on Sunday, Nov 15, 2009
Ground zero.
In some ways New Mexico comes a close second to Chernobyl.
Known by its Better Business Bureau nickname as ''Land of Enchantment,'' New Mexico is also the birthplace of the nuclear age. It has sites linked to research and development, weapon stockpiles, uranium mines, test sites and reactors alarmingly close not only to large population areas, but also to the tribal lands of the Hopi and Pueblo Indians, the oldest continuous culture in our country.
It was to Albuquerque, N.M., that photographer Patrick Nagatani moved in 1987.
The birth of the atomic age has a special significance for Nagatani. A Japanese-American, he was born in Chicago 13 days after the bombing of Hiroshima, near where his paternal grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins lived.
Shortly after he moved to Albuquerque, Nagatani turned his attention to the region's atomic history and made it the subject of his work into the early 1990s.
Through Feb. 14, the Akron Art Museum is exhibiting Nuclear Enchantment: Photographs by Patrick Nagatani, consisting of about 25 color photographs from the series.
All of the images are recent additions to the Akron Art Museum collection, thanks to the generosity of George Stephanopoulos, ABC News' chief Washington correspondent and host of the Sunday morning news show This Week. Before joining ABC News, he worked in the Clinton administration.
Stephanopoulos, who grew up in a Cleveland suburb, is the son of a Greek Orthodox priest. His father was the former Dean of the Holy Trinity Cathedral in New York.
''When we were receiving gifts a couple of years ago, a number of these works came from George Stephanopoulos,'' said Barbara Tannenbaum, Akron Art Museum director of curatorial affairs. ''A friend of his who knows the Akron Art Museum and what we do recommended that he donate some of his collection here.
''I have Nagatani's book in my personal library, so I was just thrilled,'' she added.
It's interesting that Stephanopoulos would collect Nagatani's work, for it is all about questioning society's blind faith in the so-called experts, in particular the expertise of science.
Through Nagatani's images, we see such faith not only questioned, but often ridiculed, such as in ''Fin de Siecle'' Bat Flight Amphitheater, Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico (1989).
That image is based on a story Nagatani read in Air Force Magazine, Tannenbaum disclosed.
''He found out that in 1941 a Pennsylvania dentist had proposed that bats carry bombs into war, so the lives of humans could be spared. Roosevelt actually went along with this.
''They were suicide bat bombers,'' Tannenbaum deadpanned. ''It cost the government $2 million and the lives of 6,000 bats before they found that it wouldn't work.''
The photograph shows a wasteland bounded by an emerald sky and hundreds of bats, some of them looking sort of like B-52s, but none of them flying in formation.
In the foreground is a person in a gas mask with the right hand up in the ''stop'' position. Below this person is a man also in a gas mask who's also wearing headphones and carrying a Geiger counter in his right hand, while his left hand points at something that looks like a probe skyward toward the bats.
Nagatani's photographs, while fiction, are based on exhaustive factual research.
Photographing at atomic test sites, the locations of nuclear accidents and radioactive waste dumps, he alters these places into apocalyptic-dream settings and sometimes your worst nightmares.
Using techniques learned working on movie sets, his process often resembles the special effects used in science fiction films before the advent of computer-generated imagery.
''He worked in the film industry painting sets,'' Tannenbaum said, ''and that technique, plus his storytelling sense is carried over in his photographs.
''There are also references to the black-and-white Japanese science fiction films that he grew up watching.''
Showing Nagatani's series in context like this helps the viewer become aware of the devices he uses and the different ways he approaches fact and fiction and photography, Tannenbaum said.
''All of these images are based on extensive research and reading. He read anything that had to do with New Mexico. He corresponded with different scientists and scientific groups. He made all the models and combed model-making shops for accurate decals and details, so there's a wealth of fact behind each of the images, but each of the images is a fiction,'' she explained, while also indicating that these are fictions that reflect larger truths.
''And there's also an overlay of scientific fact with belief, and with the numerous cultures who have lived in New Mexico,'' from Kachina dancers to Greek gods, to Japanese prints.
An example of Nagatani's extensive research is A7-D. 150th TAC Fighter Group, New Mexico Air National Guard, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico, a 1989 lifocolor print.
Nagatani spent three months creating this photograph. All of the planes, missiles and people are from kit models that he meticulously built and painted. The rivets, nuts, bolts and New Mexico Air National Guard decal are exact replicas of those used by the 150th TAC Fighter Group. He arranged the models in front of a large backdrop photograph of Kirtland Air Force Base, where the Air Force's Nuclear Weapons Center is located.
Likewise, F-16 Falcons (U.S.A.F. Thunderbird Team), Residential Backyard Facing Hollowed-out Manzano Mountain Nuclear Warhead Storage Area, Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico is a 1990 lifocolor print that uses fiction to illustrate fact.
Beneath the Manzano Mountains in southeast Albuquerque is an arsenal guarded by the Air Force containing more than 400 nuclear devices. Nagatani got permission to set up a barbecue in a neighboring yard, located worryingly close to the arsenal. The F-16 Falcons, the planes used by the Air Force Thunderbird Performance Team, are actually models.
''Cow Pie/Yellow Cake,'' Uranium Mine, Homestake Mining Company, near Mt. Taylor, Milan and Grants, New Mexico, is a 1989 print showing a uranium mill that operated from 1953 to 1990. It has been cited as a Superfund site in the EPA quarterly report, a publication that Nagatani regularly received.
The site's uranium waste piles — totaling around 22 million tons, spread over 245 acres, measuring 100 feet high — had begun seeping into the site's groundwater aquifer.
Nagatani set a prize-winning cow that he photographed at the New Mexico State Fair in front of the rusting remains of the mining company. The yellow sky is echoed in the yellow cow pie, recalling the term ''yellowcake,'' the nickname for uranium concentrate.
Uranium Tailings, Anaconda Minerals Corporation, Laguna Pueblo Reservation, New Mexico is a 1990 lifocolor print that illustrates a common misconception.
''If you're on the right side of a Southwest Airlines 737 heading west and look down [if you're not over the wing],'' Nagatani noted, ''you see beautiful white deposits below that make a striking contrast with the gray-brown landscape.
''I have to laugh to myself when I hear people around me admiring these 'natural' formations. They're uranium tailings deposits, acres and acres of them.
''They're all hot, they're all radioactive.'' And they're mostly on the Laguna Pueblo Reservation, believed to have been settled in 1699.
It doesn't stop there. Nagatani has chronicled mishap upon mishap, outrage upon outrage, presented often as bucolic landscapes layered with symbols of benign authority.
For instance, Golden Eagle, United Nuclear Corporation Uranium Mill and Tailings, Church Rock, New Mexico is a 1990 image showing the United Nuclear Corp.'s uranium mill, over which soars a golden eagle borrowed from a woodblock print by Hiroshige.
The eagle is a symbol of recovery, power and authority in many cultures, including ours, Japan's and Native American cultures.
The mill, operating from 1977 to 1982, used an acid leach process to extract uranium, producing wet radioactive waste, known as tailings. At this site, only a mile from the Navajo Reservation, 3.5 million tons of tailings were dumped.
On July 16, 1979, a dam at the mill broke, releasing 90 million gallons of radioactive material into the Rio Puerco, the main water source for 350 Navajo families.
This river stretches from western New Mexico to eastern Arizona, carrying water contaminated with radioactivity 10 to 100 times the maximum allowed.
Mused Nagatani: ''Studies say it's just about OK to drink the water, which means not to touch it.''
''His work doesn't deal with just the issues of the scientific age and life in our environment, but it also deals with questioning how we deal with the world and how photography interprets the world,'' Tannenbaum said.
''So there's a very strong questioning of nature and the role of the camera and photographic truths.
''He presents you with different levels of trustworthiness and fact,'' so the viewer's belief system can't come up with ''an easy yes or an easy no in any of these.''
''Generation to Generation,'' Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Nuclear-Powered Vehicles, West Mesa, Albuquerque, New Mexico was created by overlaying a photograph of Nagatani and his son with a Japanese print of rain.
This is an image about not only the fantasy of SDI, but the reality of black rain.
''Black rain is a phenomenon that occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the bomb caused the atmosphere to heat up and produce a climate change,'' Tannenbaum said.
''The rain, when it came back down, was this tarry, sticky stuff that was radioactive and stuck everywhere, making you sick.
''As a father, how do you deal with that?'' she asked. ''How do you protect your children from that?''
In a show of this kind we eventually come to ground zero.
Ground Zero, ''Operation Gnome'' (December 10, 1961), 48 Kilometers Southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico, is a 1990 print showing the site of the first atomic blast carried out in the name of peace.
After the 1953 Soviet Union hydrogen bomb test, President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed the Atoms for Peace program, which was meant to fund nuclear education and experimentation in the U.S. and the world.
Operation Gnome was part of this initiative. Nagatani shows the bomb's detonation point marked by the monument in the photograph's background.
In the foreground are sculptures by New Mexican ceramist Shereen Lobdell. With her permission, Nagatani poured lighter fluid on them and lit it, exposing the negative three times, adding more fuel each time to produce a composite shot of the flames, resulting in an image that gives the impression of a civilization in pieces rather than a bomb for peace.
After this exhibit closes in Akron, it will tour nationally. It was made possible by support from Gary and Eileen Leidich, The Mirapaul Foundation and Rick and Alita Rogers.
Dorothy Shinn writes about art and architecture for the Akron Beacon Journal. Send information to her at the Akron Beacon Journal, P.O. Box 640, Akron, OH 44309-0640 or dtgshinn@neo.rr.com.
Details:
Show: Nuclear Enchantment: Photographs by Patrick Nagatani
When: Through Feb. 14, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday and until 9 p.m. Thursday. Closed Monday and Tuesday, as well as Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and New Year's Day.
Where: Akron Art Museum, 1 S. High St., Akron
Admission: $7, $5 students and seniors
Information: 330-376-9185 or www.akronartmuseum.org
Ground zero.
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