Countdown: Two Minutes to Midnight and the Architecture of Armageddon
Countdown is a unique photobook experience that explores the offensive and defensive nuclear built environment in the United States during the Cold War as a reflection of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).
In 2021 the Doomsday Clock was set to 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to striking that hour - even at the height of the Cold War. While the Cold War's lessons and fears have largely faded from our collective memory, given today's unchecked nuclear proliferation and the bellicose rhetoric emanating from certain world leaders, it is critical to view this uncertain present through the lens of the past.
The Countdown photobook is designed as a visual conceptualization of the government's MAD nuclear policy and the calibrated attempt at offense-versus-defense balance in the strategic thinking of policy makers as reflected in these architectural spaces. Michna-Bales' found period document overlays on her fallout shelter images allude to our attempts to quantify and rationalize a nuclear war and its aftermath, while Reynolds' glitched images of missile silos hint at the inherent dangers of a breakdown in the nuclear command and control system, both intentional and accidental.
The MAD balance is illustrated through the book's design by essentially having two "front covers" with the images of fallout shelters and missile silos separate and in oppositional balance to the other. Flipping the book over to read one side or the other hints at the sometimes "upside down" logic inherent in MAD theory itself. And while the respective image sequences are kept separate, they are carefully edited and laid out in a way to counterbalance and echo each other. As the projects careen towards a climax, they collapse in on themselves at the book's midpoint for that ultimate denouement - an apocalyptic collision of hubris and wishful thinking. This dramatic culmination creates the book's "finale"- a large collaborative, four-page gatefold panorama of archival nuclear explosion images that incorporate both glitches and overlays.
Ultimately, the goal of Countdown is to offer a singularly unique treatment of these ominous architectural spaces as they relate to MAD theory in the form of a carefully designed and considered photobook, one that reminds us that, while the Cold War has long passed, the threat that nuclear weapons pose today is still ever present.
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