Scanned from a transparency, then color corrected by Pat Cagney.

Alamogordo Blues

Artist Patrick Nagatani (American, b. 1945)

Artist Andrée Tracey (American, b. 1948)

CultureAmerican

Date1989

MediumDye transfer print

DimensionsOverall, Image: 18 3/4 × 29 1/4 in. (47.6 × 74.3 cm)
Overall, Support: 20 1/4 × 30 3/4 in. (51.4 × 78.1 cm)
Overall, Mat: 28 3/16 × 38 3/16 in. (71.6 × 97 cm)

Credit LinePurchase, gift of the Photography Alliance of the Chrysler Museum of Art

Object number91.14

On View

Not on view

DescriptionThis is a dye transfer print. The image depicts a scene of Japanese tourists, seated in wooden chairs outdoors in a desert, taking Polaroid snapshots of an atomic bomb blast. A blazing red nuclear cloud approaches them.
Label TextPatrick Nagatani (American, b. 1945) Andrée Tracey (American, b. 1948) Alamagordo Blues, 1989 Dye transfer print Museum purchase, gift of the Photography Alliance of The Chrysler Museum 91.14 During their six-year collaboration, photographer Patrick Nagatani and painter Andrée Tracey staged complex narrative photo-tableaux that challenged the inherent objective role of photography. They borrowed inspiration from advertising and set design, often combining in a single tableau live models, objects suspended with monofilament, painted backdrops, and previously photographed images. The title of the photograph here, Alamogordo Blues, refers to the first atomic bomb detonation site in New Mexico. The image depicts a dark, unsettling scene of Japanese tourists taking Polaroid snapshots of an atomic bomb blast. So eager are they to capture the moment that they disregard the blazing red nuclear cloud approaching them. The grimly ironic image comments pointedly on the threat of nuclear destruction, as Nagatani recently related: Our photographic scenarios served as the perfect arena in which to explore our themes of disaster beyond our control. In this blend of fact and fiction, the threat was (and still is) so great that it seemed unreal, the reality so awful it was/is impossible to comprehend. Exhibition History"Photography Speaks II: 70 Photographers on Their Art from The Chrysler Museum Collection," The Chrysler Museum of Art, November 11, 1995 - March 31, 1996. "Treasures for the Community: The Chrysler Collects, 1989-1996," October 25, 1996 - February 16, 1997. "Silver Images: The Photography Collection at 25," Alice R. and Sol B. Frank Photo Galleries, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., November 5, 2003 - August 2004. "Women of the Chrysler: a 400-Year Celebration of the Arts," Large Changing Gallery, Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Va., March 24 - July 18, 2010. Published ReferencesBrooks Johnson. _Photography Speaks II_. Norfolk, VA: Aperture/The Chrysler Museum of Art, 1995, pp. 142-143, color ill. p. 143.