The Invisible Present: Visualizing Nuclear Contamination at the Semipalatinsk Test Site

• In Event: Afterlives: Trash as a Form of Memory

Abstract

This paper examines how artistic representations of nuclear landscapes reveal presence through absence, focusing on the paradoxical nature of nuclear waste documentation. Through analysis of Nadav Kander’s “Dust” project at the former Semipalatinsk test site and Pasha Cas’ video “Silence,” the study explores how seemingly empty landscapes encode complex histories of environmental and human devastation. The paper further explores how nuclear photography develops its own distinct phenomenology where presence emerges through what appears absent to human perception. This investigation reveals how the apparent emptiness of nuclear landscapes masks the persistent presence of both radioactive contamination and affected communities, suggesting that nuclear photography operates not just as evidence of what is visible, but as an index of what lies beyond human perceptual boundaries.

Author

• Assel Uvaliyeva, U of Southern California