As you pass through the gate at the Trinity Test Site in New Mexico’s Jornada del Muerto desert, the barren landscape sparkles in the morning sun. But there’s more to the twinkling desert than meets the eye. The glittering sand is the result of tiny green fragments of trinitite, an artefact of the ominous events that took place there almost 80 years prior.
When J Robert Oppenheimer detonated the world’s first atomic device on July 16, 1945, it not only sent a mushroom cloud billowing 7.5 miles into the air and the resulting fireball melted the surrounding desert, it thrust the world into the nuclear age.
Nuclear Landscapes explores the subsequent legacy of atomic energy upon the American landscape. In exploring and documenting lands associated everything from abandoned uranium mining towns and processing facilities to atomic test sites, reactors, missile bases, fallout shelters, and waste depositories, the exhibition poignantly tells the story of America’s coming of nuclear age.
Divided into six chapters – Mining, Processing, Testing, Weapons, Power, and Waste – the exhibition presents a sobering look at how atomic energy has carved its indelible presence into the America’s past, present, and future. The exhibition will additionally feature a public engagement program including an artist talk, music concert, ekphrastic poetry callout and reading, and panel discussion.
About the Artist
Brett Leigh Dicks is an Australian/American photographer who shares his time between Santa Barbara, California and Fremantle, Western Australia. Embracing the ethos of the New Topographic Movement, Brett primarily investigates the landscape and the ties that it shares with human history. His work has been featured numerous solo exhibitions along with major photography festivals and touring exhibitions and published by the likes of The New York Times, VICE, ABC Radio, and Griffith Review. Brett’s work was included in the Figge Art Museum’s touring exhibition, Magnetic West, a finalist in the Sony World Photography Awards and 2025 Olive Cotton Award. Brett also served as an ART ON THE MOVE/Museum of the Goldfields artist-in-residence at the Museum of the Goldfields in Kalgoorlie.
Website: www.brettleighdicks.net
Exhibition Website: www.nuclearlandscapes.net
Instagram: @brettleighdicks
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