Photoworks Issue 7
Gordon MacDonald
Chaology
‘No one who saw it could forget it, a foul and awesome display’ Kenneth Bainbridge, physicist
Sitting in one corner of the world and looking out at the unfolding of history from a safe distance it would be easy to become convinced that the extraordinary scenes of war and destruction, viewed daily in newspapers and on the television, have been crafted for gratuitous visual entertainment. The giant puffs of smoke - that grow from the ground like time-lapse filmed flowers – have such beauty of form, and seem so cloud-like and soft, that they are hard to balance alongside the violent force involved in their creation. They become extremely incongruous when set against the scenes of carnage and bloody casualties - that often follow them on news bulletins - and with the twisted metal and broken buildings so popular with the photographers of aftermath - or what David Campany terms ‘late photography’
The sound also often belies the force of the incident, usually only revealing itself as a dull thud several seconds after the explosion. You can usually tell the distance of a film crew from the blast by the time that the sound takes to reach them – a little like counting seconds in-between a lightning bolt and thunder clap to gauge your distance from a storm. This distance separates the photographer, and us, from both the launch of the missile and the hot, devastating fizz of impact - from the perpetrators and victims – and allows us to mentally remove ourselves from the horrific realities of war.
One of the witnesses to the Trinity atomic test (the first atomic bomb test in Nevada, USA, and identical to the Fatboy bomb – the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki) describe the atomic explosion and growth of the mushroom cloud as ‘tremendous and one might almost say fantastic that the immediate reaction of the watchers was one of awe rather than excitement. I am sure that all who witnessed this test went away with a profound feeling that they had seen one of the great events of history.’ But most describe the sound and shockwave as anticlimactic – as if the visual impact of the event was so overwhelming, or even beautiful, that the sound, heat and wind that followed would have needed to be a glorious symphony to compete.
Tess Hurrell’s photographs are of explosions - atomic bombs, detonated landmines, the impact of mortar fire and exploding rockets. At first sight they are the frozen milliseconds of violent and unnatural incidents held still by the camera – insights into the beauty of destruction which are only made possible by the instantaneous recording facility of photography. In reality they are sculpture. They are cotton wool, pipe cleaners, string and talcum powder skillfully manipulated to become exact facsimiles of explosions. This knowledge could of course diminish the impact of the photographs but, in fact, the images resulting from Hurrell’s process look more ‘real’ than many of the photographs they are based on.
Archival photographs of the early American atomic bomb test in particular, have a sense of the ‘unreal’ because of their iconic status and the sheer unimaginable scale of the event and its impact on the world. It is as if they were designed to be photographed and admired, and that the scientific use of such documentation was secondary to the construction of beautiful images. The buildings and cars set in the blast area of the tests were also photographed and one could be forgiven for imagining that the bomb was a giant photographic flash designed to light these scenes of unfolding devastation – much like the gunpowder ignited in trays which illuminated much early studio photography. The light is so intense that it blackens the sky, holds still the minutia of destruction and illuminated the surroundings with a dream-like glow.
These archival images, like most art, are about the delivery of an idea combined with a powerful aesthetic – but more sinisterly were designed as an illustration of an emerging empires power and ambition. Tess Hurrell’s series of images, Chaology, allow us to step back from both these and the more recent news imagery that they are drawn from and to reconsider our fascination with explosions. They mimic the form of the original images and poke fun at their propogandistic intent.