While preparing my recent exhibition on the history of radiation protection, entitled Living with Radiation, I became aware of an astonishingly rich paper and digital trail of photographs documenting the development of nuclear science and industry. Among the valuable sources has been the archive of the IAEA, which recently opened up its online catalogue, making accessible a vast array of visual materials that had long remained challenging to access. Yet, most of the images found, overwhelmingly represent the history of the nuclear age from the perspective of the Global North, perpetuating a particular historiographical lens on regions long described as the developing world. Based on the photographic material collected for Living with Radiation, this paper argues that constructing a global history of the nuclear age requires expanding the visual geography of nuclear history beyond its dominant Euro-American frame. Doing so, it opens the way for new narratives shaped by diverse local experiences, aesthetics, and power relations. For decades, historians have used images as sources of historical knowledge, often as supplements or correctives to textual records. Photographs have been mobilized to substantiate historical claims, to enrich biographical and autobiographical accounts, and to complement oral histories. However, the recent visual turn in historical scholarship has elevated images to a different epistemological and historiographical status. Images can function as a distinct language, one that allows historians to move beyond the naturalized canon produced by texts, oral accounts, and artifacts. In this sense, photographs are not mere pictorial representations of reality; they are archives of information; they participate in a broader dialogue involving nuclear history, ethics, and the relational accountability of photographers, as well as the institutions—museums, archives, and research centers—that preserve and interpret them. In Living with Radiation, especially nuclear institutions, along with researchers themselves, became part of the photographs’ biography. 

Maria Rentetzi, Chair of Science, Technology and Gender Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Coffee/tea, cake and fruit will be served @2pm.