"Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945" photo exhibit at International Center of Photography, New York City, May to August 2011

Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945
International Center of Photography
May 20–August 28, 2011

After the United States detonated an atomic bomb at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the U.S. government restricted the circulation of images of the bomb's deadly effect. President Truman dispatched some 1,150 military personnel and civilians, including photographers, to record the destruction as part of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The goal of the Survey's Physical Damage Division was to photograph and analyze methodically the impact of the atomic bomb on various building materials surrounding the blast site, the first "Ground Zero." The haunting, once-classified images of absence and annihilation formed the basis for civil defense architecture in the United States. This exhibition includes approximately 60 contact prints drawn from a unique archive of more than 700 photographs in the collection of the International Center of Photography. The exhibition is organized Erin Barnett, Assistant Curator of Collections.

icp.org/​museum/​exhibitions/​hiroshima-ground-zero-1945

A short video, produced and directed by Adam Harrison Levy, edited by Stephanie Gould, with music by Paul Brill, tells more about the exhibit.