¡Colores!; 302; New Mexico's Nuclear Enchantment: The Photographs of Patrick Nagatani

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Photographer Patrick Nagatani takes us on an atomic tour as he investigates New Mexico's nuclear enchantment. Next, on colores. Photographer Patrick Nagatani takes us on an atomic tour as he investigates New Mexico's nuclear enchantment. Photographer Patrick Nagatani takes us on an atomic tour as he investigates New Mexico's nuclear

enchantment. Photographer Patrick Nagatani takes us on an atomic tour as he investigates New Mexico's nuclear enchantment. Photographer Patrick Nagatani takes us on an atomic tour as he investigates New Mexico's nuclear enchantment. Photographer Patrick Nagatani takes us

on an atomic tour as he investigates New Mexico's nuclear enchantment. Photographer Patrick Nagatani takes us on an atomic tour as he investigates New Mexico's nuclear enchantment. Photographer Patrick Nagatani takes us on an atomic tour as he investigates New Mexico's nuclear enchantment. Photographer Patrick Nagatani takes us on an atomic tour as he investigates New Mexico's nuclear enchantment. Now for some good sound effects. Press releases are prepared. If the bomb works, the public will be told that an ammunition dump accidentally exploded. Should the bomb go off when

I'm expected for us, killing the key man at the test site, the world will learn only that a freak fired up in Hamish ranch took the lives of America's top businesses. Ready? Yeah. It's time to hang the trinitite. At 5 .29 in the morning, July 16, 1945, after the first atom bomb was exploded, Fermi goes in with a Sherman tank that's lid lined and he finds all this green rock. And what it is, it's the sand that's been fused through intense heat to form this greenish glowing rock and they call it trinitite. The army dispatches buses and trucks to the town of Carri Soso, 30 miles from the test site. The standby in case the population of 1 ,500 must be evacuated. Airports within 100 miles are pulled without explanation, but all air traffic is banned in the area. As a busy

switchboard operator, something big is shown going to happen. On July 15, all non -essential personnel are ordered out of the test area. 150 selected officers and civilian scientists will be allowed to witness the payoff to their work. At Alamogordo, a player lights the night sky, signal that the countdown is started. An automatic timing device now controls the test. Thirty -two, thirty -eight, thirty -six. The machine is entrusted to the future of now. Thirty -two, thirty -five. At

29 minutes and 50 seconds fast 5 a .m. on July 16, 1945. The last player is 5. Zero, minus 10 seconds. Seven, six, five, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, six, seven, seven, six, seven, seven, six, seven, seven, six, seven, seven You know the world would not be the same. Few people laughed. Few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad

Gita. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that one way or another. This is Grandpa Yoshimura. My mom's father was in the Japanese army

during the Russian Japanese war. He came to the United States in Isse. My parents are nieces, which are second generation Japanese born here in the United States. It's a nice picture of my mom and dad. My mom was born in Los Angeles. My father was raised in a farm kind of typically with the way his family in outside of Hiroshima. There were farmers also. During the war, they were both relocated to different camps. They didn't know each other at that time. My father went to Arkansas. My mother went to a camp called Manzanar. This is in New York County, I think in California. They moved to Chicago. They were released from the camps, moved to Chicago where they met and where I was born. I only know where my father's

side of the family, from the Nagatani side, and that's in a farming community outside of Hiroshima. I said to the city. They were never affected directly by the Hiroshima bomb. I think we know where everybody knows where they were when Kennedy was assassinated, where they were when Sputnik was announced or something. I think the same thing with the Japanese is that they kind of everybody knows what they were doing that day when the bomb was struck, especially those people outside of the city. I don't know what they

were doing. I don't know what they were doing. I don't know what they were doing. I don't know what they were doing that day. I don't know what they were doing that day. I don't know what they were doing that day. I'm a child of a nuclear age. I don't have a baby picture. I put it this year. Here it is. August 19, 1945.

What is that? About a month. A little bit of a month and three days after the first atomic blast. Oh, here I am dressed as Native American. I seem to be the only one respecting the flag here and giving me the Cub Scout salute. I'm going to do Den 9, the All -American boy. My mother, I think, was a den chief at that time. I'm riding my All -American tricycle in Chicago. Here I am in the All -American wagon with our weapons doing an All -American thing hunting. Here I am carrying American flag in my John Wayne pose as the Calvary officer. The thing is with me, it was like eating meat and potatoes with chopsticks. Here's a picture I'm really proud of. It's a similar time period, study and concentration. This was in a Chicago Tribune.

Atomic ray gun ring holds Japanese American youngsters spellbound. It's my brother Nicholas and myself at age six. Still concentrating on these kinds of things. Spellbound, I like that part. Spellbound, a land of enchantment. This is one of my favorite images. These are kasharis. They're clowns. And

they always precede Native American kachina dances. They come out and they joke and they hit you with sticks, they wake you up, they irritate you, kind of what clowns do. I love clowns because I think that there's a seriousness to clowns. They could make fun of things but then underneath all of that laughter and that making fun of it is there's a lot of truth to that. And many, many cultures have clowns. This backdrop is about four by five. It sat in my studio for the longest of time, sketches upon sketches of what was going to be in front of the scene. And it ended up with one morning having breakfast at the frontier. I saw the kasharis and I thought these guys are perfect for this. And photographed them made color images of them and they're not only collaged on but they're positioned in front of the backdrop. And I thought them to be perfect. You know, I look back at some of these images and I don't, there aren't very many friends. I mean, my friends were my brother. And so there's a great deal to do with isolation, I

think, at that time. That might have something to do with being an artist about, you know, turning inward and looking at your ideas and rather than becoming so involved with the culture and an outward basis. I mean, I lived at this radio station and there wasn't a kid within 10 miles. You can fund this little mind games. You make things, you laugh at things. If you don't laugh, then, you know, you're in trouble. And so this kind of like black humor comes into play. And the Japanese Americans photographed themselves. That was just jumping on top of a perceptual thing that occurred in one of my trips to the Trinity site. The busloader Japanese can, they drive in and they all get out of the bus and start immediately taking pictures as they do everywhere else. They go whether it be Disney or Land of the Grand Canyon or the Trinity site. And I'm thinking, you know, these guys have no sense of the irony of what is occurring here at this moment. This

is an interesting one, 52 children, 51 Polish American kids and one Japanese American kid. Also, there are three children with glasses, one Japanese American kid and two other little girls. Of course, I'm talking about me. So, I've always been kind of this outsider, this kind of oddity in this group. I did later become Catholic to kind of conform and that didn't seem to work. You know, I really never knew I was different from any of these other guys until some of the kids told me I was different. Then I would come home and say, hey, mom, what's the chink? And she says, well, you know, that's a Chinese person. You're really Japanese American, so don't worry about it. You're okay. You know, there's a good chance that these 52 Polish American Catholic kids didn't know differences. But I was, my being the only person in there not only with glasses, but being a Japanese American kid was, I mean, that became of

interest to me because since I was different, I was interested in what those differences were. This one is about patronizing missiles in a way. I was raised Catholic. My parents are Buddhist, so I'm crazy. But Catholics bring rosaries to Rome, to the Pope, to bless. They bring rosaries. And I think Buddhist pilgrims bring little Buddhists to Kamakura, to the big Buddha. And so these people are bringing missiles to this missile here, which is at the entrance. When you drive over towards White Sands, there's a big Nike Hercules missile there. And there's this beautiful landscape. And there's this one. I always say penis like white missiles sitting in the landscape. And I'm beginning to think that instead of statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln of people, we have missiles. You know, like we honor them or something. So it's the first ground to

air missile that was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. You have a grandstand seat here to one of the most momentous events in the history of science. In less than a minute, you will see the most powerful explosion ever witnessed by human eyes. And this is the significance of the moment. This is the first full scale test of a hydrogen device. If the reaction goes, where in the thermonuclear era? Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. In 1983, I was in Los Angeles about a block from the atomic cafe where I used to

eat my noodles. And in fact, the first Polaroid done in 1983, it was a piece called Atomic Cafe. And it kind of began the directorial mode or the arranging for the camera that I've done. I did previously and I've continued to do since. We decided to do things larger than life. We decided to play with illusion and illusion to make things look as if it was almost a decisive moment. And foremost, in our ideas, was to cover nuclear issues. In a sense that they were images during a nuclear attack at the moment that most of us only fantasize in a nightmare sort of way. It was also at the moment when things were just being blown apart or scattered in a nuclear wind. It was

also interesting in that we saw this vision as predominantly red. We started making sets. And we've made sets for six years. It was a phenomenal success in our minds. Yeah, we went to often bought Germany, in fact, to do a piece called Alamagordo Blues. Like many of the nagatime trees are sets, it's a constructed set that's about seven by nine feet. There's a scaffolding direct to the boven in these figures and other things like the Polaroids are strung and monofilament line and are hanging in the set. And there's always, because it's life size, almost real scale, a real

person in the scene. And in this case, I have blue makeup on and I have situated myself behind the mural cut out figures. Well, 1987, I moved to New Mexico. For the first year and a half, when I was here, I actually just did research and gathered information. And the idea for nuclear enchantment, the images, just started to materialize. I think it was after two years of living in Albuquerque that I made the first image. And from then, it's been about a two -year process of making all 40 images and picking and choosing locations and sites. There were two other explosions in the state of New Mexico. This was the second. And it was the first peaceful application, at least planned in that way,

of a nuclear device being exploded. It was called Operation Nome. And it was the first explosion under Eisenhower's Operation Plough Shares program, which was Adams for Peace. So to develop underground, to test for seismic occurrences underground so they'd board into the ground and they'd explode in a nuclear device outside of Carl's bed. Last week, there was an article in the paper about the core leaks at this site. But this is a third explosion outside of, it was outside of Farmington. It was called Operation Gas Buggy with the El Paso Gas Company and the Atomic Energy Commission. And so there have been no other nuclear explosions in New Mexico. This was the last one. There's a little plaque out there that tells you that you can't drill down within a two -mile area in its encarcinational forest. So right next to the Apache in the Enreservation. And I felt that I was going to make a life here in New Mexico.

And it was important for me to understand the politics and the cultures within the state. And in developing that understanding, I think that what became important to me became my work. When you go to the Bradbury Museum, this is what you'll see. They talk about weapons concepts. Here's an interesting one. Effects of nuclear weapons. And there's no people in it though. It doesn't show any victims from Nagasaki or Hiroshima. And that was in my mind when I saw this. I said this is all very interesting scientifically. But what does it have in terms of humanity? My vision was to put these beakers here of ashes, white ashes. And people's Japanese people's names and ghost figures of children to present another display in the museum that they should have. There's not a state in the United States that doesn't have a major military facility. It's our economy making weapons. This picture

here for me was about too many bombs, too many smart systems, too many air to ground missiles that can't possibly fit on this airplane. I have in my hand here three missiles that are guided by television. These three missiles, this one here is an air to air missile to take out aircraft. But for killing power, these two really will do the job used quite extensively in the Iraq and Middle Eastern operations. I think that those are fascinating. This has to take out a lot of people. This is one of the largest bombs that an aircraft could drop in MK -84. It's about 1 ,000 -pound bomb. This is an arsenal of some things that I've made in F -15 from Holloman Air Force Base with a couple of side -wounder missiles. Two F

-111Ds that fly out of Canon Air Force Base, two F -116s, F -117s, stealth, all aircraft that are flown out here in the skies of New Mexico. Then we have some of the missiles and bombs that have built. It's kind of morbid in one way to learn all this equipment. It's fascinating in terms of the military advancements and to know what this country has in terms of killing power and understanding that. I'm interested that the development of one of these television -guided missiles could fund the Albuquerque Public School System for probably the next two years. Here's the entire sports program for the state of New Mexico, football uniforms for everybody. Let's take the homeless out of the street with one of these. I mean,

we can essentially... I'd say that if you took all these little plastic things here and if they represented... I'll take the aircraft, too. If they represented money that, essentially, you can probably feed the people of the world with what is represented on this table and feed them for probably a year. Well, you know the most beautiful thing that I found in New Mexico when it first came here was the landscape. There's a side of me that finds that wherever there's beauty, there's something, there's an edge that's maybe not so beautiful. You know, it nestled in the beautiful hills by Band of Lears, Los Alamos. So it's seeing like this balance. And I think it in New Mexico were a state that has all this stuff like an Air Force Base right next door to a Native American reservation, little city of ordinary working -class people, you know, and then a weapons lab for theory and development

occurring right there. You'll see whipping cranes flying down the Bosque del Apache, and then within a split second you'll see four F -111s flying to Canon Air Force Base in order to fill in the sky. The bottom line for this work is, I hope that this work has been done for the future generations, for people who actually deal with the environment and the issues that are in the work, so that maybe we'll leave some kind of a planet here for the young people in the future. This is, for me, the future, unless we rectify some things. This is Carl's Bad Caverns, the bats come out of Carl's Bad at night. It's very beautiful to observe. The whipside is very close to Carl's Bad. The title for this is, it's French fond du siècle, the end of the century. This is the future for me. It's about the bats becoming even radioactive. The last picture is this piece called, I call, Generation of Generation, and it's my boy and I. I started out

with an umbrella with a trinitite rain, and here I end with an umbrella with kind of a black rain. The rain has to do with a black rain after the Hiroshima blast. It was highly radioactive. And it's the final image in the work in that, in a way, Star Wars is something about the future. And so up in the sky are SDI, Star Wars weapons, brilliant pebbles, anti -missile defense systems, putting more radiation in the sky, and contaminating even the sky. On a summer day in 1945, the stillness was shattered in a remote New Mexico desert. A million years of civilization had produced the birth of the atomic age, a force for good or evil, the choice belongs to men.

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