100 Suns – Michael Light

The title, 100 SUNS, refers to the response by J. Robert Oppenheimer to the world’s first nuclear explosion in New Mexico when he quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, the classic Vedic text, “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One… I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This was Oppenheimer’s attempt to describe the otherwise indescribable. 100 SUNS likewise confronts the indescribable by presenting without embellishment the stark evidence of the tests at the moment of detonation. Since the tests were either conducted in Nevada or the Pacific the book is simply divided between the desert and the ocean.  The evidence of these photographs is terrifying in its implication and also disconcerting as a spectacle. The full article