Yvonne Dalschen
Ghosts of the Manhattan Project
After living for 20 years as a non-scientist in the secret cities of the Manhattan Project, the bomb has almost become a familiar. I encounter the glorious history, the happy memories of people working together to end the war on a daily basis. Coming from Germany, my memories of war and mass destruction are different and Chernobyl not just an impressive period drama. The selective memory, the hero worship and the atomic nostalgia disturb me. When Covid hit, I was stuck in this place of fences and atomic heritage and how little my community cares for science and history when it might inconvenience them.
Portal 4, the last standing structure of the Uranium enrichment facility K-25, once the largest building in the world, became my portal into the past and made me explore accessible places and visual archives. Svetlana Boym writes: : “A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double exposure, or a superimposition of two images – of home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life.” In “Ghosts of the Manhattan Project” I layer my photos with images from the archives, using textures to hint at uncanny decay. The images invite the viewer to focus and refocus, to remember and discover. I am proposing a reflective nostalgia that remembers victims and alternatives, questions the linear story told and points to unanswered questions. The discussion about the origin and future of our nuclear age should not be over and done with.