Taking 1959-1960 as a pivotal cultural and political moment, the contributors to Breathless Days reframe postwar Western art history, examining the aesthetic and ideological alliances and tensions in art throughout Western Europe and the Americas. The collection provides a heterogeneous account of the intersections of the fine art world with literature, jazz, film, and theater in New York, Paris, Milan, Brazil, and Cuba. This reveals the knotty and multilayered connections among these divergent artistic milieus. Whether discussing Duchamp's With My Tongue in My Cheek, Brazilian abstraction, postrevolutionary Cuban art, Jean Tinguely's self-destroying machines, or Burroughs's Naked Lunch, the contributors show this brief period to be a key to the cultural and political development of Western Europe and the Americas during the Cold War. Contributors. Carla Benzan, Clint Burnham, Jill Carrick, Eric de Chassey, Mari Dumett, Serge Guilbaut, Luc Lang, Hadrien Laroche, Aleca Le Blanc, Richard Leeman, Tom McDonough, Regis Michel, John O'Brian, Kjetil Rodje, Ludovic Tournes, Antonio Eligio (Tonel)

What can photographs reveal about Canada’s nuclear footprint? The Bomb in the Wilderness contends that photography is central to how we interpret and remember nuclear activities. The impact and global reach of Canada’s nuclear programs have been felt ever since the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. But do photographs alert viewers to nuclear threat, numb them to its dangers, or actually do both? John O’Brian’s wide-ranging and personal account of the nuclear era presents and discusses over a hundred photographs, ranging from military images to the atomic ephemera of consumer culture. His fascinating analysis ensures that we do not look away.

What does it mean to live in a post-atomic world? Photography and contemporary art offer a provocative lens through which to comprehend the by-products of the atomic age, from weapons proliferation, nuclear disaster, and aerial surveillance to toxic waste disposal and climate change. Confronting cultural fallout from the dawn of the nuclear age, Through Post-Atomic Eyes addresses the myriad iterations of nuclear threat and their visual legacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Whether in the iconic black-and-white photograph of a mushroom cloud rising over Nagasaki in 1945 or in the steady stream of real-time video documenting the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, atomic culture - and our understanding of it - is inextricably constructed by the visual. This book takes the image as its starting point to address the visual inheritance of atomic anxieties; the intersection of photography, nuclear industries, and military technocultures; and the complex temporality of nuclear technologies. Contemporary artists contribute lens-based works that explore the consequences of the nuclear, and its afterlives, in the Anthropocene. Revealing, through both art and prose, startling new connections between the ongoing threat of nuclear catastrophe and current global crises, Through Post-Atomic Eyes is a richly illustrated examination of how photography shapes and is shaped by nuclear culture.

Wherever there have been nuclear weapons and nuclear fission, there have also been cameras. Camera Atomica explores the intimate relationship between photography and nuclear events, to uncover how the camera lens has shaped public perceptions of the atomic age and its anxieties. Photographs have a crucial place in the representation of the atomic age and its anxieties. Published in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario to coincide with a major exhibition there in 2014. Camera Atomica examines narratives beyond the "technological sublime" that dominates much nuclear photography, suppressing representations of the human form in favour of representations of B-52 bombers and mushroom clouds. The book proposes that the body is the site where the social environment interacts with the so-called "atomic road": uranium mining and processing, radiation research, nuclear reactor construction and operation, and weapons testing. Cameras have both recorded and - in certain instances - provided motivation for the production of nuclear events. Their histories and technological development are intimately intertwined. All photographs, including nuclear photographs, have the capability to function affectively by working on the emotions and fascinating audiences. Through a wide range of visual documentation, Camera Atomica raises questions such as: what has the role of photography been in underwriting a public image of the bomb and nuclear energy? Has the circulation of photographic images heightened or lessened anxieties, or done both at the same time? How should the different visual protocols of photography be understood?

Taking 1959-1960 as a pivotal cultural and political moment, the contributors to Breathless Days reframe postwar Western art history, examining the aesthetic and ideological alliances and tensions in art throughout Western Europe and the Americas. The collection provides a heterogeneous account of the intersections of the fine art world with literature, jazz, film, and theater in New York, Paris, Milan, Brazil, and Cuba. This reveals the knotty and multilayered connections among these divergent artistic milieus. Whether discussing Duchamp's With My Tongue in My Cheek, Brazilian abstraction, postrevolutionary Cuban art, Jean Tinguely's self-destroying machines, or Burroughs's Naked Lunch, the contributors show this brief period to be a key to the cultural and political development of Western Europe and the Americas during the Cold War. Contributors. Carla Benzan, Clint Burnham, Jill Carrick, Eric de Chassey, Mari Dumett, Serge Guilbaut, Luc Lang, Hadrien Laroche, Aleca Le Blanc, Richard Leeman, Tom McDonough, Regis Michel, John O'Brian, Kjetil Rodje, Ludovic Tournes, Antonio Eligio (Tonel)