The Elephant’s Foot is a photographic and research project by photographer Edward Nurton that, through adopting the strategies of both fiction and documentary genres, explores the expanded boundaries of real nuclear accidents.
Nurton delved into the study of the history of nuclear incidents since WW2 and, with a particular pillar of investigation on recent accidents (namely Chernobyl in the 1980s and Fukushima in the 2010s), has created a universe to train the viewer and reader’s mind on a story that has uncertain, and therefore universal, applications and relevance.
The setting is a small town on the banks of a contaminated river, and the narrative follows how radioactive exposure impacts the human body, society and the wider natural world. Something has clearly happened in the scenes depicted and the accumulating ambiance of the series; the iconography and imagery are clearly recognisable from much modern popular culture. However the rootlessness of time and place allows Nurton to bring his audience on a journey into the possible, the contingent, and as such highlights the ever present, though largely invisible, dangers of radiation and nuclear fallout.
The project’s fictive drive allows Nurton to play with space and time, questioning how such events have unfolded in the past and why they’ve been so prone to secrecy, paranoia and indeed coverup. Though based heavily on research, Nurton presents the story within the frame of a sci-fi script he has developed, making it a dystopian story albeit one wholly honest to real events. By interrogating details, one can parse that everything has a reference – whether it be the date of a disaster, the location of a town, or a man’s bodily injuries. By mining the historical and cultural palimpsests built up around the topic, and adopting a technique of collage, amalgamation and the filmic, Nurton creates a new space that tells the story of this sickness and catastrophe anew.
