Tag: looking back

by jad

Seattle’s Nuclear History: UW

Did you know that UW had a nuclear reactor? It’s not there anymore; in fact, the whole nuclear engineering program was shut down in 1992, a few years after the reactor itself was decommissioned. People fought to keep the brutalist building (renamed in the interim as More Hall Annex) that housed it, but after several rounds of litigation, UW was finally allowed to demolish it in 2016. They built the Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering in its place. Architecture fans pushed hard for incorporating elements of the original structure in the new building, but the … Continue reading “Seattle’s Nuclear History: UW” →

by jad

Seattle & Atomic Age Art

Today is the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a good day to share that I’ve been working with the International Uranium Film Festival (@uraniumfilm) to bring the festival to Seattle in April. There are a lot of moving parts, but it’s looking good so far! More soon. This partnership came my way in the midst of several months of reading and research on atomic history and nuclear culture, which is also how I found myself at the UW Special Collections Library yesterday looking at Box 13 of the Fred Moody papers. I read Moody’s “Seattle and … Continue reading “Seattle & Atomic Age Art” →

by jad

Reflections on Seattle’s Light

I walked through the ghost town that used to be my city during these dying days. I saw a holy man crying with mother Mary – all these dying days. x “As difficult as I sometimes find to admit it, I’m a westerner and even, now, a Seattleite. I love being a resident of a remote state, where (we tell ourselves) we’re disconnected from everyone else and therefore forced to make everything up on our own, feverishly hoping that what we come up with will somehow, magically, prove to be indispensable to the rest of the world which, hemmed in … Continue reading “Reflections on Seattle’s Light” →

by jad

Rituals & Liturgies, Fathers & Sons

The last time I was in this venue seeing this band was also the first time I started imagining myself taking photos in spaces like these. That’s the night I met Dom and Ellie and asked about their cameras; I even spoke to veterans like John whom I’ve seen at nearly every gig I’ve been to since, arm raised, Canon blazing. Michael and I reminisced about that last night; it hasn’t even been a whole year, but it feels a lot longer. In that time, I’ve enjoyed figuring out something like a style and bits and pieces of a technique … Continue reading “Rituals & Liturgies, Fathers & Sons” →

by jad

World Photography Day 2023

Today is #WorldPhotographyDay and it trips me right out to look back on how far I’ve come with whatever this is since last year, when I wasn’t sure why people kept giving me cameras or what the hell I was supposed to do with them. I took photos, of course, but I wasn’t sure if it was “photography” — and I knew I wasn’t a photographer, that’s for damn sure. But I’m not as sure anymore. x Someone who gave me the best compliment I could have ever received* about this silly little hobby of mine posted something the other day about … Continue reading “World Photography Day 2023” →

by jad

Nuclear Culture & Photography

“The first bomb, set to go off at a height of some five hundred metres, produced a nuclear flash which lasted one fifteenth-millionth of a second, and whose brightness penetrated every building down to the cellars. It left its imprint on stone walls, changing their apparent colour through the fusion of certain minerals, although protected surfaces remained curiously un-altered. The same was the case with clothing and bodies, where kimono patterns were tattooed on the victims’ flesh. If photography, according to its inventor Nicéphore Niepce, was simply a method of engraving with light, where bodies inscribed their traces by virtue … Continue reading “Nuclear Culture & Photography” →

by jad

“Phooey America”: Nuclear Culture

I’ve been interested in the history of the atom bomb and nuclear technology ever since I read about Hanford in a book on the Columbia River called “The Organic Machine” almost two years ago. This book inspired me to visit the region last summer for my first serious foray into film photography, and soon after, I would fortuitously meet a photographer at the PCNW fair who had published a whole book on that area I had just been to. I was hooked and I kept telling myself I’d visit again. I immersed myself in the history of that godawful decision … Continue reading ““Phooey America”: Nuclear Culture” →

by jad

Montréal: Expo Dream

One of the Montreal things that I’d read about obsessively before going was Expo 67, the great World’s Fair that took place here on Canada’s Centennial. It’s a multilayered megaevent that’s still seen as Canada’s cultural “Camelot” or even “last good year,” and there’s a lot to say about it, but during our stay at the In-Terminal Hotel, one thing of that era stood out: I couldn’t help but imagine the excitement that people must have felt as the world and even cosmos seemed to be getting smaller and smaller. You can’t really think of that decade without thinking of … Continue reading “Montréal: Expo Dream” →

by jad

Montréal: Airport Swim

This time last year, I was telling you about our little cocoon of comforts by a lake in Idaho. I hadn’t planned to tell you about this cocoon of comforts on our last night in Montreal exactly one year after I told you about that cabin by that lake, but I’m not surprised by the coincidence. x I told you about that lake of baptisms and the washing away of shame, so it’s only appropriate that, one year later, I’d tell you about a dinky little overchlorinated pool on the eighth floor of an in-terminal hotel where silly people try … Continue reading “Montréal: Airport Swim” →

by jad

Let Us Compare Mythologies

Leonard Cohen’s first publication was a book called “Let Us Compare Mythologies,” a phrase that kept nagging me as significant to my trip to Montreal. What if we compared mythologies? Settler versus indigenous; English versus French; Expo 67 versus FLQ 70—what would we find at the other end of that trigonometry? That line comes from the slim volume’s second poem, I would learn, one with a most elusive title of its own: FOR WILF AND HIS HOUSE. The poem itself is a touching testament to the harsh contrasts of Jewish agency within Christian structuration. You can find it online read … Continue reading “Let Us Compare Mythologies” →