The Three Sunrises

The Three Sunrises

"Now, I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds…"

A long time has passed (for me, at least) since a new piece has been completed, and though this is largely due to a depletion of material with which to create, it is also due to some other factors, notably, a spike of depression, as well as a lack of ideas. In all honesty, as much as I hate to stop and rest, two months of no output is not a long hiatus, but the creeping fear of "the end of all ideas" takes root during low times, and with growing anxiety I started to believe it. Despite this, I did take some stabs at a few pieces that were half started long ago, to see if they would bear any fruit. They did not.

During one of these half-hearted attempts, I started to play with some light effects, and then that triggered an idea of sorts. Being deep in the seemingly endless winter of New England, in February, I couldn't stomach the idea of another blue composition, or any hue of the cool variety, so I changed what I was working on to the warmest orange I could muster (though I toned it down later). The sunlight I had created and my love for the omnipresence of "three" in our culture as well as our fictions led me to create two more suns, and now I had three suns. What does that mean? Well, it could mean a lot of things, but the first thing that grabbed me was the Holy Trinity, but the idea of representing them in the ephemera of the sky as suns didn't really connect very well. I threw out the underlying model shot and replaced it with another. And then the idea solidified.

Model Ed Barron in his period piece top hat and tails has served me well in the past: shaded of Tesla have been indicated, and this shot of Ed looking at something unseen to the left, mostly in shadow, with three suns in front of him, made me think of Robert Oppenheimer and his brilliant but terrible role in the creation and implementation of the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer developed the bomb in a lab in the desert, as he wished to create in the middle of natural beauty. His first test site he named "Trinity," another "three" to draw on.

Oppenheimer's device was used to destroy both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the successful test was conducted months before in the desert, he thought of a Hindu scripture quote: "now i am become death, destroyer of worlds…"

It seems that once his weapon was used for its intended purpose, his scientific focus in the creation of the device turned to the horror and possibly the guilt for his role in the destruction it unleashed. He spent the last twelve years of his life trying to become a voice for the regulation of and caution against such weapons in the hands of mankind.

Regarding the title, "the Three Sunrises" is a song by U2, but not about Oppenheimer or nuclear weapons, but the title fit the image really well, so I used it. Since our sun is a giant nuclear explosion in space, it seemed to fit that with the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II, the three sunrises here represent our sun, or the concept of the atomic bomb itself, as well as the two bombs themselves. I imagined this image would be a representation of Oppenheimer witnessing, perhaps in a dream and metaphorically so, his genius and invention igniting the sky and the city below. A dream of guilt, a dream where he watches helplessly as invention inevitably becomes destruction, the world's as well as his own.

The dangers, in my opinion, of rooting an image in an historical, iconic figure such as Oppenheimer is being too literal. I did not want the image to be so specific that there could be no other interpretation for it. So, no bombs, no Enola Gay flying overhead, no cities on fire, no mushroom clouds. To me, this is Oppenheimer, but it could just as well not be.

I found this quote from him, which I quite liked and thought fit my piece:

"It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so."

model: Ed Barron