Ola Skowrońska (Poland)
Trinity, 0.16

5:29, June 16, 1945, Jornada del Muerto desert.

The first ever nuclear bomb explosion. Berlyn Brixner is on site, documenting the event with 50 cameras of varying speeds running from different locations to capture the shot in full motion. 16 ms after the explosion, he captures his most famous photograph - a white-gray, unnaturally perfect dome of dust towering over a dark desert. The photo was originally banned, “since it was considered far more provocative than the habitual mushroom cloud.” Unlike a cloud, the bubble did not look natural.

This gesture of censorship was a starting point for me to reflect on photography as a medium and the strength of the associations which it carries within itself. Public acceptance of the Manhattan Project, and later the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was dependent on the images by which American citizens got to know them. This phenomenon inspired me to start asking people about their associations with the censored Brixner photograph. I ran the collected keywords - which varied from dead soldier’s helmet to lollipop - through the Internet Archive library, creating a chain of subconscious images.

Ola Skowrońska is a Polish visual artist. She graduated from the Polish National Film School in Łódź with an MFA in Photography. She works primarily in photography, film and performance. Her practice is focused on long-term, research-based projects which originate from observations of historical and social phenomena. Often working in collaboration with other individuals, she is interested in the possibility of creating a space for equitable conversation and exchange in art, particularly in the context of migration and contemporary social politics. A large part of her artistic research is based on working with archives, both personal and public. She lives and works in Łódź.