The Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced by the United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) in 1956 and published by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in 2015, is the most comprehensive record of Cold War nuclear targets ever declassified. Spanning over 800 pages, this document lists approximately 4,500 target coordinates across the Sino-Soviet Bloc.

I travel to the 1956 nuclear targets in China, photographing the sites and printing the images as radioactive uranotypes. Many of these sites have undergone dramatic transformations: abandoned aircraft hangars and fuel tanks house contemporary art museums; steel mills founded under Japanese occupation now supply materials for China’s latest aircraft carriers; and the site of a 1938 engineered flood that killed hundreds of thousands was targeted once more for mass civilian destruction. These seemingly mundane landscapes carry the deep historical trauma of foreign imperialism, civil war, and the threat of Cold War annihilation. Today, they are also shaped by the rapid urban renewal and modernization of contemporary China.

Designated Ground Zeros photographed: 103 of 368 (July 28, 2026)

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