Michael Light
100 SUNS: 062 SEQUOIA 5.2 kilotons Enewetak Atoll, 1958/2003

Archival pigment print, 11 x 14 inches
Edition 1/5, signed, on mount
Framed
Courtesy of the artist and EUQINOM Gallery
Estimated value: $5,300

About 062 SEQUOIA: Personnel watch as Sequoia’s Wilson cloud lights the humid Pacific morning. Sequoia likely tested a prototype that led to the tiny W-54 air defense and tactical nuclear warhead (see Little Feller I). The W-54 was stockpiled from 1961 to 1972, with a variable yield of 10 tons to 6 kilotons, and weighed only 50 pounds.

About “100 SUNS”: Between July 1945 and November 1962 the US is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the US and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became literally invisible, but more frequent: the United States conducted a further 723 underground tests until 1992. "100 SUNS" documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with 100 photographs drawn from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the US National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from the clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen, and still photographers were sworn to secrecy.

About the Artist:
Michael Light

Michael Light (b. 1963) is a Bay Area photographer, bookmaker, and pilot. He has exhibited globally including solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, the Chrysler Museum, VA, the Knoxville Museum of Art, TN, and the Hayward Gallery, London. His work is in numerous museum collections including SFMOMA, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Research Institute, the Nevada Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Hasselblad Center, Sweden and the Victoria & Albert, London. Over the course of his career the artist has published 23 editions of 7 monographs. His awards include: The John Simon Memorial Foundation Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography the Artadia Award. Light’s work has been written about and published in such publications as Art in America, Artforum, Time, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, British Journal of Photography, San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Wired. His series FULL MOON is permanently displayed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Website: michaellight.net| euqinomgallery.com
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