"Phantoms in the Dirt" at the Museum of Contemporary Photography offers more than meets the eye.
by Jake Malooley
Twenty-two miles southwest of the Loop, the world's first nuclear reactor lies entombed in concrete beneath a tract of Cook County Forest Preserve known as Site A. About 2,000 feet north is Plot M, a dump for 1940s radioactive waste, marked by the Department of Energy with a monument that reads caution—do not dig. Disregarding the warning, Jeremy Bolen buried film there at various times in 2012; after two weeks, he excavated the rolls, printed photos that display ghostly fields of purple—the apparent result of exposure to radioactivity—and sprinkled the prints with dirt and grass from the site before framing.…[ Read more ]