Michael Light's '100 Suns' features a collection of government photographs from nuclear weapons tests between 1945 and 1962. The tests, named innocuously, were captured by military photographers at a Hollywood base. Light conveys that these images serve both as documentation of technological advancement and as disturbing artwork depicting surreal explosions in stark environments. Following the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, nuclear testing moved underground, reducing photo documentation and leaving citizens less informed about governmental actions regarding nuclear weapons.
The photos are part scientific study and part propaganda, a measure of America's technological progress and the power of its arsenal.
In all of these underground tests, there has been little to see and little to photograph.
There is no record that helps keep an informed citizenry viscerally aware of what its government is doing.
Surreal balls of fire and ash set against barren landscapes; man-made stars, as Light described them, rising over the horizon.
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