aftermath: Landscapes of Devastation

A large, bright-white plume of smoke and vapor dominates the vast and vibrant blue sky and dwarfs the surrounding natural clouds in this aerial photograph. From this high vantage point, the photographer represents the grand visual effect of the characteristic mushroom-shaped cloud formed after the first hydrogen-bomb test, named “Ivy Mike.” Photographed seconds after the initial explosion, the viewer is witness to the impressive scope of the bomb’s destructive force. This image, along with film footage created at the time, was promoted by the U.S. government as proof of a thrilling advancement to the country’s nuclear capabilities during the early years of the Cold War (1947–91)—a period of escalating global tensions. While the scene represents the sublime power of manmade technology, the physical destruction wrought on the landscape beneath the bomb and the potential for human annihilation remain unseen in this explosive image.

In A Harvest of Death, photographed in the days after the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Timothy O’Sullivan frames a landscape filled with the victims of the battle in the foreground and the victors on horseback in the background. In this otherwise blurry image, the photographer utilizes selective focus techniques in order to emphasize those killed. The impact of O’Sullivan’s empathetic image is underscored by a poignant caption written by Alexander Gardner (1821–1882): “Such a picture conveys a useful moral: It shows the black horror and reality of war, in opposition to its pageantry. Here are the dreadful details! Let them aid in preventing such another calamity falling upon the nation.” One year after the conclusion of the American Civil War (1861–1865), Gardner compiled 100 photographs made by O’Sullivan and ten other photographers into his Photographic Sketchbook of the War, the elegiac tone of which proved unpopular in the Reconstruction-era United States.

Through debris-littered landscapes, Peter Turnley and David Seccombe represent the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Turnley’s image draws our attention to the mix of heat and smoke emanating from the recently collapsed skyscrapers. From his vantage point, firefighters and first responders can be seen combing through the scalding remains of the Twin Towers for signs of human life in the early evening of September 11. Seccombe’s photograph of this area, known as Ground Zero, presents viewers with the partial architectural skeleton of one of the towers in the days following the attacks. The tilted remains of the arched structure are reminiscent of Gothic church ruins found in Europe from centuries past. Yet the still-raw image of bright blue sky and settling dust reminds the viewer of the recent occurrence of this tragic event. Photographs of 9/11 continue to shape our collective memory of the event and, in turn, figure powerfully into current conceptions of American national identity.

In the mid-1990s, Peter Turnley—known for candid portraits of people living amidst turmoil, violence, and displacement—turned his lens on Bosnian-Muslim refugees in Croatia uprooted by the Croat-Bosnian War (1992–95), which consumed much of the Balkans region after the fall of Yugoslavia. Indelible marks of the conflict are found throughout this image, in which two children laugh and play amidst the rubble of a bombed-out building. Their momentary joy is at odds with the bleakness of the surrounding devastation. The presence of the surviving children in Turnley’s image compels viewers to acknowledge the suffering and resilience of families escaping from war and genocide.

Arthur Rothstein’s carefully staged image of a sun-bleached cattle skull in the Badlands of South Dakota was made several months before devastating droughts hit the region. Rothstein served as a documentary photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a federal program developed under President Roosevelt’s New Deal that aimed to report on and alleviate the effects of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. The desiccated landscape in Cattle Skull was initially received by the public as a quintessential symbol of death-by-drought during the Dust Bowl. When it was revealed that Rothstein experimented with the placement of the skull, he and Roosevelt’s administration were accused of manufacturing images in order to garner support for their public programs. Though Rothstein’s photograph does not depict the aftermath of a devastating event per se, his image speaks to the U. S. government’s efforts to use photography to shape public perception of catastrophe.

In this image, an expansive prairie landscape unfolds below ominous dark clouds. Stems of flowers and tall grasses stand between the viewer and a white, steepled church centered on the horizon line in the background. Elliott Erwitt visited and photographed the site eighty years after a United States cavalry unit surrounded and massacred a group of Sioux. It is the absence of human beings in this vast landscape that evokes the lives previously lost at this location. From Erwitt’s distant perspective, the small memorial to the victims rises into view, barely visible just beyond the horizon line. Church at Wounded Knee ironically relegates the memorial to the margins of the image, paralleling the often-overlooked experiences of Native Americans at the hands of the United States government.

Sally Mann employs a wet-plate collodion process to create negatives of the terrain surrounding Manassas, Virginia, where two major battles of the American Civil War (1861–65) took place. Her chosen process eschews the details of the landscape and echoes the visual style of nineteenth-century war photographs, although her images were made 140 years later. As one photograph from a larger series of images depicting important Civil War battlefields, Untitled (Manassas #25) evokes an experience of a site long haunted by powerful, though contested, memories of the war. A native of Virginia, Mann and her family are tied deeply to this landscape. Through photographing these culturally potent sites she conjures visual connections to past conflicts, which still resonate into the twenty-first century.