White Sepulchres: Palomares Disaster Semicentennial Publication

Precarious human life, in survival against unknown odds, becomes the contour by which we can start to 'see' the radioactive waste. But these photographs also demand that we 'see' the unevenness in human existence, the uneven 'valuing' of humans, and indeed animals, which itself contributes to the diminishment of disaster. The challenge of these images is that we perceive both the slow violence of radioactivity and its whitewashing--its purposeful concealment by the United States and Spain--and that we do not turn away from the living figures that force uncomfortable questions about the history and present of racism, economic migration, and sexual dissidence, as well as environmental degradation. From Shamira A. Meghani, "Seeing the Obscured" Read more