Seán Duggan
The Keys
[Pinhole photograph] Larger? ••• 2010 Artifacts Calendar
Here is one of the latest in the Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin series. This was taken about three weeks ago on my most recent New Mexico trip. I first photographed the keys on my previous trip to New Mexico last May, but I was not satisfied with the images I made of them. So they traveled with me again when my work schedule took me back to the Southwest this Fall. In the intervening months I had also acquired many more more keys, including six large ones in France this summer.
This scene was photographed on a windy ridge in the mountains overlooking Los Alamos. I hiked through the charred, skeletal remains of a burned out forest that was incinerated in a catastrophic wildfire nine years ago, and up a steep, rocky slope to reach this arch. All around was a scorched landscape. Even though the fire was in 2000, it looked much more recent than that.
Los Alamos, of course, was one of the primary sites for the Manhattan Project, the secret World War II program that resulted in the development of the atomic bomb. The main think tank for the project was located here in the weapons research and design laboratory, and it was here on the mesa below this natural arch that the first atomic bombs were assembled.
There are several things I like about this image. Here are three of them, two visual and one conceptual:
The jagged shape of the rocky ridge resembles the business end of the skeleton keys scattered on the rock.
I also like that the fact that the natural arch creates a keyhole shape in the rocks.
And finally, on a conceptual level, I am intrigued that this image of keys and a rocky keyhole was photographed in the place where over sixty years ago the keys were discovered that unlocked the secret Pandora's Box of the atomic bomb.
The first two things were clear to me as I was on the windy ridge making this photograph. The last has only occurred to me as I have worked on the image yesterday and today.
I really value that aspect of photography. That some photographs have layers and that you can often discover new meanings if you peel away enough of those layers, look closely at the image, or regard it from a different perspective.
The Keys
[Pinhole photograph] Larger? ••• 2010 Artifacts Calendar
Here is one of the latest in the Artifacts of an Uncertain Origin series. This was taken about three weeks ago on my most recent New Mexico trip. I first photographed the keys on my previous trip to New Mexico last May, but I was not satisfied with the images I made of them. So they traveled with me again when my work schedule took me back to the Southwest this Fall. In the intervening months I had also acquired many more more keys, including six large ones in France this summer.
This scene was photographed on a windy ridge in the mountains overlooking Los Alamos. I hiked through the charred, skeletal remains of a burned out forest that was incinerated in a catastrophic wildfire nine years ago, and up a steep, rocky slope to reach this arch. All around was a scorched landscape. Even though the fire was in 2000, it looked much more recent than that.
Los Alamos, of course, was one of the primary sites for the Manhattan Project, the secret World War II program that resulted in the development of the atomic bomb. The main think tank for the project was located here in the weapons research and design laboratory, and it was here on the mesa below this natural arch that the first atomic bombs were assembled.
There are several things I like about this image. Here are three of them, two visual and one conceptual:
The jagged shape of the rocky ridge resembles the business end of the skeleton keys scattered on the rock.
I also like that the fact that the natural arch creates a keyhole shape in the rocks.
And finally, on a conceptual level, I am intrigued that this image of keys and a rocky keyhole was photographed in the place where over sixty years ago the keys were discovered that unlocked the secret Pandora's Box of the atomic bomb.
The first two things were clear to me as I was on the windy ridge making this photograph. The last has only occurred to me as I have worked on the image yesterday and today.
I really value that aspect of photography. That some photographs have layers and that you can often discover new meanings if you peel away enough of those layers, look closely at the image, or regard it from a different perspective.