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The question of whether and how to communicate the problem of nuclear harm into the far-future to avoid intrusion is a vexing one. Following a film series and public dialogue, the decision was made to, first, print a handful of photographic images taken inside the Onkalo facility on stoneware ceramic, and, second, to deposit those tablets inside saliferous (i.e., flowing) salt deposits dating more than forty million years old in Hallstatt, Austria. The stoneware medium and salt storage method promises to preserve the images for at least 10,000 years.︎

Principal investigator: N.A.J. Taylor︎ 
 Sponsors: Sterling Archer; Bob and Wendy Ashcroft; Alex Bagg; Ellise Barkley; Jyoti Blenclowe; Jessie Boylan; Paul Brown; Chris Bunting; Anthony Burke; Richard Butcher; Elliot Chapple; Ruth Charters; Daniel Clifton; Gavin and Jess Crawcour; Andrew Evans; Lucas Gibson; Julian Hewitt; Brodie Higgs; Avon Hudson; Andrew Hustwaite; Redi and Evald Koobak; Michael Lake; Luca Lana; Benjamin Law; Sophie and Tim Mattick; Cindy McGrath; Leeann McKnight; Chris Mosely; Geoff and Sue Nicholson; Andrew Ritchie; Jesse Sutton; R.H. and J.M.L. Taylor; Sue Wareham; Nicola Weston.︎ 
Funding: $6,500 (external)
Key output: an exhibition︎

The Archive of Nuclear Harm collected and displayed materials on life and death in the nuclear age. We also designed and delivered educational programs. Items of interest included artworks and other cultural artefacts that explore the full range of harms—to bodies and the biosphere—that are inflicted by both the civilian and military applications of nuclear technology, as well as the universal problems of nuclear contamination and waste. Since the legacy of the nuclear age must be conceived on timescales of up to one million years and threaten the continued safe operating conditions of Earth’s biosphere, this will be a memory institution like no other.︎

Principal investigator: N.A.J. Taylor︎ Sponsors: Alphaville Theatre Company / Australia Council for the Arts; Ghost Foundation; Nuclear Futures Partnership Initiative / The University of New South Wales; The Seed Box: A MISTRAS-FORMAS Environmental Humanities Collaboratory / Linköping University; The University of Alabama; The University of Montreal; The University of Queensland; Whitman College 
Funding: $20,000 (external)
Key output: a manifesto︎


I began making photographs of Australian uranium mining sites in the early 2000s whilst working as an applied ethicist in the institutional investment industry, although I did not begin exhibiting or publishing my nuclear photography until 2009. The process of making photographic images, and the decision to publish some of them, has increasingly informed how I both comprehend and communicate the spatial and temporal enormity of nuclear harms. To date fieldwork of nuclear sites has been conducted in Australia, Belgium, England, Estonia, France, Germany, Finland, Iran, Israel, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. I am a active member of the Advisory Board of the Atomic Photographers Guild which was established in 1987.︎

Principal investigator: N.A.J. Taylor︎
Institutional partner/s: Atomic Photographers Guild︎
Key output: an award-winning essay︎