Sedan Crater, Area 10, Northern End of Yucca Flat Looking South, Nevada Test Site
Emmet Gowin, American, born 1941
1996
Toned gelatin silver print
Image: 9 3/4 × 9 3/4 in. (24.8 × 24.8 cm)
Sheet: 10 7/8 × 14 in. (27.7 × 35.5 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Elizabeth and David C. Lowenstein '67 Fund
© Emmet and Edith Gowin; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York
2011.46
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
20th century
Object Name
Photograph
Research Area
Photograph
Not on view
Label
Detonated on July 6, 1962, Sedan was a 104-kiloton shallow underground thermonuclear test conducted as part of Project Plowshare at the National Test Site in Nevada. The program explored potential non-military applications of nuclear explosives for large-scale construction and other projects. The resulting explosion emitted radioactive fallout reaching as far as Illinois and the largest man-made crater in the US—approximately 1,280 feet in diameter and 320 feet deep. The aerial perspective in this dramatic photograph by Emmet Gowin displays the geological scale of human impacts on the land made in the name of science and war.
From the 2022 exhibition This Land: American Engagement with the Natural World, curated by Jami C. Powell, Curator of Indigenous Art; Barbara J. MacAdam, former Jonathan L. Cohen Curator of American Art; Thomas H. Price, former Curatorial Assistant; Morgan E. Freeman, former DAMLI Native American Art Fellow; and Michael Hartman, Jonathan Little Cohen Associate Curator of American Art
Course History
ENVS 7, Ecopsychology, Terry Osborne, Spring 2012
ENVS 7, Ecopsychology, Terry Osborne, Winter 2013
SART 30, SART 75, Photography II, III, Virginia Beahan, Spring 2013
ENVS 80, Writing Our Way Home, Terry Tempest Williams, Spring 2012
GEOG 11, Qualitative Methods and the Research Process in Geography, Jennifer Fluri, Winter 2012
GEOG 11, Qualitative Methods and the Research Process in Geography, Jennifer Fluri, Fall 2013
ENVS 7, Ecopsychology, Terry Osborne, Winter 2014
WRIT 7, Religion and Literature: Revisioning the Invisible, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2014
WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Spring 2014
SART 29, Photography I, Christina Seely, Fall 2014
WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2014
WRIT 5, Writing into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Fall 2014
WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015
WRIT 5, Writing Into the Wilderness, Nancy Crumbine, Winter 2015
SART 17.9, The Photographer as Activist: Making Art Inspired by the Hood Museum's Collection , Virginia Beahan, Winter 2015
ENVS 7.3, Ecopsychology, Terry Osborne, Winter 2015
GEOG 11, Qualitative Methods and the Research Process in Geography, Abigail Neely, Winter 2015
WRIT 5, After Humans, Christian Haines, Winter 2015
ENVS 7, Ecopyschology, Terry Osborne, Winter 2019
ANTH 7.05, Animals and Humans, Laura Ogden, Winter 2022
GEOG 31.01, Postcolonial Geographies, Erin Collins, Winter 2022
ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022
ANTH 50.05, Environmental Archaeology, Madeleine McLeester, Winter 2022
ARTH 5.01, Introduction to Contemporary Art, Mary Coffey and Chad Elias, Winter 2022
ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022
ANTH 3.01, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, Chelsey Kivland, Summer 2022
SPAN 65.15, Wonderstruck: Archives and the Production of Knowledge in an Unequal World, Silvia Spitta and Barbara Goebel, Summer 2022
SART 29.01, Photography I, Virginia Beahan, Fall 2022
Exhibition History
Looking Back at Earth: Contemporary Environmental Photography from the Hood Museum of Art Collection, Friends Gallery and the Owen Robertson Cheatham Gallery, Hood Mueum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 7-August 26, 2012.
Seeking Solitude: A Selection of Landscape Photographs from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, a Student Curated Exhibition for Professor Katie Hornstein’s History of Photography, ARTH17, Spring 2013, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 26-September 8, 2013 .
Provenance
Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, New York; sold to present collection, 2011.
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