- Behance.netProject Featured On:Behance.net — 2/19/09
- Photography ServedProject Featured On:Photography Served — 8/5/09
The Dark Side
Description
Visual history of the offensive and defensive weapons of the Cold War. Includes Safeguard system, Titan II missile and launch facility, Minuteman II missile and launch facility, thermonuclear bombs, the White Train, and nuclear aircraft engine.
Copyright Info
Featured on 8/5/09
- Featured on:
-
Behance.net
-
Photography Served
- The Dark Side
In its broadest sense, culture is the sum total of our beliefs, our fears, our behavior patterns, our institutions, our common values, as well as our art, music, and literature. But the arts often neglect or omit reference to the Cold War. In fact, most of us who lived through those times have scant visual knowledge of what may be fairly called the dark side of our culture. We were immersed in the myopic soup of getting an education, finding a job, marrying, and having children. Meanwhile, far from our thoughts, bright and earnest young men were spending 24-hour duties behind 7-ft thick steel doors. There they drilled constantly the procedures to launch missiles with a 30-minute trip to the Soviet Union. The nuclear warhead on the Titan II missile shown here packed nearly three times the explosive power of all the bombs dropped by the Allies in WWII. And there were 54 of these missiles on alert for 25 years.
Most of us remember periods in our lives most vividly in terms of the popular music of the time. This project depicts some of the objects from the dark side of our culture during the Cold War and links them with popular music of the era. As surreal as the images are by themselves, their juxtaposition with the music magnifies the dreamlike quality of what was really at stake and how little the existence of these doomsday machines seemed to touch our lives. By the way, bright and earnest young men (and now women) still pull 24-hour duty in launch-control bunkers every day. (Make sure your speakers are on and don't forget to come back from Youtube :-) 
Armored Nuclear Weapon Transport Rail Car and Locomotive, "The White Train" 1951
Gun Port, Armored Nuclear Weapon Transport Rail Car of "The White Train" 1951
Experimental Nuclear Propulsion Reactor HTRE-2 for Strategic Bombers 1957- Mk-28 Thermonuclear Bomb Cluster, 1958
- Titan II ICBM in Silo 1963
- Titan II ICBM in Launch Duct 1963
- Control Console, Titan II ICBM 1963
- Titan II ICBM Cableway from Control Room to Missile Duct 1963
- Minuteman II ICBM at Launch Facility Delta-09 1965
- Blast-Hardened UHF Antenna, Minuteman II ICBM Launch Control Facility Delta-01 1965
- Security Control Center, Minuteman II ICBM Launch Control Facility Delta-01 1965
- Blast Door Art, Minuteman II ICBM Launch Control Center Delta-01 1965
- Deputy Commander's Console, Minuteman II ICBM Launch Control Center Delta-01 1965
- Missile Site Radar, Safeguard ABM System, Nekoma, ND 1975
- Missile Site Radar with Generator Cooling Towers, Safeguard ABM System, Nekoma, ND 1975
- Sprint Missile Silos and Missile Site Radar, Safeguard ABM System, Nekoma, ND 1975
- Sprint Nuclear-Tipped Interceptor Missile 1975
- Spartan Missile Silos and Universal Missile Bunker, Safeguard ABM System, Nekoma, ND 1975
- Spartan Nuclear-Tipped Interceptor Missile 1975
- Spartan Missile Silos and Missile Site Radar, Safeguard ABM System, Nekoma, ND 1975
- Warhead Handling Bunker , Safeguard ABM System, Nekoma, ND 1975
- Perimeter Acquisition Radar, Safeguard ABM System, Concrete, ND 1975
- B83 1-Megaton Thermonuclear Gravity Bomb 1983
Discuss This Project: ( Comments)