Lop Nor is a former salt lake, now largely dried up, located in Xinjiang province in northwestern China. The lake was used as a nuclear weapons test site. The first Chinese nuclear bomb test, code-named “Project 596,” took place in 1964. By 1996, 45 nuclear tests had been conducted underground and in the atmosphere. The region is still heavily contaminated with radioactivity.

Florian Ruiz: “I wanted to measure and depict the invisible presence of this danger in the desolate landscape. Through a digital process of assemblage, superimposition of image fragments and distortion, I want to reveal the danger of radioactivity and visualize the change of the atom. The transparency effects, the fractured perspectives give rise to a form that is in motion. The process reinvents and twists the landscape, creating a kind of vertigo, a discomfort.”

Florian Ruiz. Born in France in 1972. Lives and works in Japan. His work explores the limits of photography through various experimental techniques and processes. Processes that reinvent and transform the actual landscape. His work on imaging radioactive contamination has won several awards (Sony World Photography Award, Felix Schoeller Award, Art Photography Award) and has been exhibited at Paris Photo, Photo LA, Art Paris, Somerset House and Aipad New York.

florianruiz.photoshelter.com

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