How can a photograph reproduce the visual experience of watching a nuclear detonation, an event so bright and so rapid that eyewitnesses to such a blast can barely understand what they see? How have scientists and artists leveraged photography to extend the limits of human vision, generating information about atomic bomb explosions and nuclear reactor failures by revealing visual traces that human bystanders cannot observe? In this essay, I examine the intimate ties between nuclear events and photographic technologies to uncover the hybrid uses of nuclear photographs as records of visual experience, as shards of scientific data, and as cultural artifacts meant to influence public opinion. I engage in a close study of the photographic projects surrounding three pivotal moments in nuclear history: Henri Becquerel’s discovery of radioactivity in 1896, the detonation of the first nuclear weapon in 1945 and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the same year, and the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear reactor meltdown of 2011.

The stories behind the photographs of these nuclear events serve as valuable case studies for revealing how pieces of scientific evidence evolve into cultural icons. Nuclear photography functions as more than a means of mechanical vision, and illustrates the diverse ways in which scientists and artists have used the camera to convey knowledge about objects and phenomena that are inaccessible to the unaided senses. Throughout the essay, I show that photography’s multifarious representational obligations—to function now and again as a surrogate for the human eye, as an objective record of imperceptible events, and as a malleable tool for generating new information—play a crucial role in constructing the cultural, political, and scientific narratives of nuclear technology.

Read an excerpt here.