Jim Sanborn: Atomic Time

In Atomic Time, sculptor, photographer and conceptual artist Jim Sanborn has combined his longstanding interests in invisible natural forces and secrecy, pairing together two separate but related projects: a series of photographs called Atomic Time and images of his latest work, the room-sized installation Critical Assembly. Inspired by the Manhattan Project, the first nuclear weapons program at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Critical Assembly is a representation of what was once a secret site of government-sponsored research. The installation includes actual examples of electronic instruments, hardware, furniture, tools and materials from the Los Alamos Laboratory of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, which Sanborn acquired from retirees living in New Mexico who worked on the Project. The photographs in the Atomic Series are distinguished by an intense cobalt blue-like color, similar to the true color of radioactivity. Half of the series is of abstract images made by exposing sheet film to actual pieces of uranium ore; the other represents an assortment of radium-dial alarm clocks made between 1920 and 1950, acquired from regions around the Trinity Site in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb exploded.