Title: let there be a world
Photographer(s): Various photographers
Writer(s): Felix Greene
Designer(s): Hubert W.Leckie
Publisher(s): The Fulton Publishing Company, Meadville, U.S.A.
Year: 1963
Print run:
Language(s): English
Pages: 64
Size: 21,5 x 28 cm
Binding: Softcover
Edition:
Print: Fontana Lithographers U.S.A.
Nation(s) and year(s) of Protest: World,1963
ISBN:
In the early 1960's the anti-nuclear movement grew. Felix Greene, a leading left wing figure edited this protest book published in 1963 by the Fulton Publishing Company of California. Using a mixture of journalistic, commercial stock and official government images, Greene produces a narrative which is an impassioned cry for an end to this collective insanity. (In many cases, these images appear to have been chosen solely for their visual impact rather than accuracy in representation. Photographs made by Ansel Adams, Werner Bischof and Andreas Feininger are all used.) In order to visually represent the invisible dangers posed by radiation, Greene adopts the (probably predictable) strategy of relying heavily upon the imagery of children to illustrate the long term genetic damage caused by exposure to fallout. Such images are used by aid agencies the world over because the message they send is apparently clear and unambiguous, cutting through the empathetic barriers of the viewer who may have difficulty in identifying with distant victims. (By contrast, images of injured adults who may look different from us, be regarded as our enemies or somehow culpable for their own demise are less favoured because they may be subject to a more nuanced and less sympathetic response on the part of a distant viewer.) As the text states: "because of the bomb tests already carried out no child anywhere in the world can drink milk that is free of poison caused by radioactive fall-out." These photographs of healthy and happily innocent children are contrasted with dark images of horrifically deformed, stillborn babies from Nagasaki. The net effect of such an emotive juxtaposition is to produce a causal link between the decisions made in the present with the irrevocable long-term effects they may have upon future generations.
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