Unsafe Light

In photography studios, the red glow of safelights allows photographers to view negatives without destroying them. In this photograph, the photo studio is anything but safe. A panoply of red-colored darkroom equipment, from chemical baths to jugs of developer, lenses, and filters, are mysteriously suspended by strings. A ghostly double exposure shows a man pointing a large-format camera toward a scene of industrial production outside the window, with pipes and smokestacks filling the sky with smog. Nuclear disaster is a recurring theme in the work of Nagatani, who was born days after the bombing of Hiroshima. Here, he and Tracey connect the specter of disaster with the means used to document and circulate images of it.