Fiona Amundsen

The Trees are Leaking Light involves a series of 4×5” pinhole photographs of hibakujumoku—trees that survived the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It seeks to imagine a conversation focusing on ideas of latency as connected to images; to radiation; to future warfare; to other-worldly sapience; to human and nonhuman entities. The project explores this conversation by focusing on a group of trees located within one kilometre of Hiroshima’s hypocentre. Although these trees’ branches and trunks were decimated during the bomb’s blast, their root systems survived, eventually resulting in new growth. Each tree has embedded in its DNA, its own unique story of survival, witnessing and knowledge of a time before nuclear weapons. I’m curious about what these tree ancestors have seen, ingested and passed on to one another since they experienced ionising radiation from an atomic attack. The project uses film’s indexical material qualities, which can literally evidence residue radiation, to explore this curiosity. The photographs of this series use a developer made from seaweed, which was gathered from the ocean current of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Powerplant wastewater release. The seaweed holds minute trace levels of radioactive isotopes (tritium) that impact the sensitive film and are rendered as white splotches and flares. These marks are a reminder to pay attention to what’s unseen, be it trace radiation or the political ideology which first gave rise to the development of nuclear weapons.