Join artist and activist elin o’Hara slavick for a lecture on atomic politics followed by a hands-on cyanotype workshop. Elin will discuss her research on the sociopolitical and environmental impact of nuclear weapons and powerplants, which informed multiple publications on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, her work with the intergenerational artist collective SWANS (Slow War Against the Nuclear State), and photo-chemical drawings, cyanotypes, and autoradiographs visualizing the lasting trauma of nuclear tragedies. Later in the event, attendees will learn how to make their own cyanotypes—a slow-reacting printing technique that uses sunlight or UV light to create images of objects on photosensitive paper.
Artist bio
elin o’Hara slavick is a California-based artist, curator, critic, and activist who has exhibited her work internationally. She is the author of Bomb After Bomb: A Violent Cartography, After Hiroshima, Holding History In Our Hand for the 75th commemoration of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and Cameramouth, a chapbook of surrealist poetry. She was artist-in-residence at the University of California, Irvine, 2022-2025, the Huntington Research and Art Fellow at CalTech in Spring 2022, and served as the Professor of Visual Art, Theory and Practice at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 27 years. She is currently teaching Photography at Sarah Lawrence College in Fall 2026 and is working on a book entitled Dark Archive.
Image: elin o’Hara slavick, Queen Anne’s lace, contaminated mushroom and mysterious circle, cyanotype. Courtesy of the artist