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A secret world that thrived for only a short time period is brought to life in “Picturing the Bomb: Photographs From the Secret World of the Manhattan Project,” at the PCC Art Gallery.  

This exhibit opened to the public on Oct. 5. This will be the colleges contribution to Pasadena’s Art Night on Friday.

The exhibit revealed thirty six shocking images that were collected and edited by Rachel Fermi, a PCC photography instructor, and Esther Samra, a photography historian.

The most powerful part of this exhibit is that the photographs are paired so that there are two per display. The pair includes one photo that shows ordinary people’s stories and the other photo shows the science side of actually making and developing the atomic bomb.

“The key thing about his exhibition is that by pairing the images we are trying to make an open ended way of viewing this secret history, and see it both as a feat of science and engineering, but also the ordinary human side, and the moral dilemmas the project began for us all to this day,” said Fermi, in an email.   

“The exhibit itself is documenting the era of destruction. It’s hard to get over, [because the bomb had] the potential to blast the whole world,” said Benjamin Herrera Jr., 25, biology.

“I really like the presentation of [the photographs]. I like that the photos are personal but informative. It is kind of a new vision into the lives of people, [because] we are used to just before and after photos of the atomic bomb,” said Dante Acosta, 22, photography.

This project started when Fermi was in graduate school studying photography. She was at her aunt’s apartment in Chicago looking at shoeboxes of old family photos.

“In amongst the ordinary snapshots we are all familiar with – babies, picnics, parties – there was a small faded red photo of a mushroom cloud – it jumped out –  I had no idea why it was there or what it was except that it was nuclear explosion,” said Fermi.

Although she knew that her grandfather, Enrico Fermi, had been involved with the development of the first atomic bombs, that photo sparked her curiosity. Fermi decided to take the photo to the Los Alamos National Laboratory to see what they could tell her about it.

“There I found out that it was the only color photo of the world’s nuclear explosion – from a test done secretly in the New Mexican desert weeks before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – the original ground zeroes,” said Fermi.

After finding out how rare the photo was, Fermi and Samra started wondering about what other kinds of photos were out there. “We spent five years visiting different government laboratories, archives and visited with individuals who worked on the project at all levels – from scientists to military personnel,” Fermi said.

“We were also fascinated by the difference between the personal snapshots people had and the official photographic documentation,” she said.

The exhibit is open daily from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. until Nov. 12.

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