Noon Time Collection Talk with Philippe Depairon

Looking at photographs from the Black Star Collection of photojournalism, this talk by Philippe Depairon, recipient of the RIC’s 2018 Howard Tanenbaum Research Fellowship, will examine the evolution of nuclear iconography between 1945 and 1990. Beginning with the nuclear tests undertaken at the Bikini Atolls and on Indigenous soil in Nevada, we will see how pictures of the iconic and infamous nuclear mushroom reached their apogee in the 1960s before atomic bomb testing became illegal, therefore rendering nuclear energy invisible. The talk will likewise discuss the attempts of various photographers to make the atomic complex and its potential consequences visible again.

Free and open to the public.

Image: Photographer unknown, [Atomic Explosion], 1971, gelatin silver print. The Black Star Collection, Ryerson Image Centre