Hot Spots
Shortly after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (August 1945), the Kodak Company observed some spotting on their film that they traced back to contamination in their cardboard. Dr. J.H. Webb, a Kodak employee, studied the matter and concluded that the contamination must have come from a nuclear explosion somewhere in the U.S. In fact, it came from the world’s first nuclear explosion, the Trinity Test, that took place at Alamogordo New Mexico, July 16, 1945. Fallout from the explosion had contaminated the river water that the mill in Indiana had used to manufacture the cardboard pulp. Recognizing the sensitivity of this information, Dr. Webb kept his discovery secret until 1949. In response to this event, the Kodak Company installed air samplers in the intakes of their building ventilation system to monitor for fallout. I took one of these dotted films, copied it into a negative (now blueish image with clear dots) and applied a rectangular to polar distortion.
ELECTRIC HAZE 