Patrick Nagatani was born in Chicago in 1945, just days after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were decimated by atomic bombs.  His father’s family lived right outside Hiroshima.  These events resonate throughout his Nuclear Enchantment series.

In 1987, Nagatani moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Known as the “Land of Enchantment” for its magical landscapes, it was also the birthplace of the nuclear weapons industry.  He began to photograph sites linked with nuclear research and development, such as weapon stockpiles, uranium mines, test sites and reactors.  Many of these were alarmingly close to large population areas or to tribal lands housing our country’s oldest cultures including the Hopi and Pueblo Indians.  The resulting series of photographs juxtapose symbols of Japanese and Native American beliefs with the feats of modern science.

Nagatani’s photographs are constructed, not documentary, images and were made without the aid of a computer.  He drew on his experience painting Hollywood film sets to stage scenes for the camera.  The planes and missiles are all models built by the artist from commercial kits.  Nagatani photographed people and props in front of actual places or in his studio before photographic backdrops.  He sometimes pasted cut-out images atop his photographs, and often painted parts of them in acidic hues.  Finally, Nagatani would photograph the collaged or painted work in order to produce the finished photographic print.

Nuclear Enchantment examines how photography influences our ideas about historical truths and probes our society’s blind faith in science.  Nagatani poses these questions but leaves it to us to determine the answers.