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 the coordinates of more than 4500 nuclear targets across the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe.

I traveled to the nuclear targets in China identified by the SAC, documenting these sites through photography and creating radioactive uranotypes using the uranium printing process. Today, the once-abandoned Shougang Steel Mill in Beijing has been revitalized as the 2022 Winter Olympics Big Air venue. Warehouses, airport hangars, and fuel tanks along the Huangpu River in Shanghai now house art galleries and museums. Mines in Fushun and Dayu have found new life as recreational areas and educational sites. What appear today as mundane Chinese landscapes are legacies of colonialism, shifting international relations, and China's economic reforms.

Number of nuclear targets photographed: 47 of 368 (as of December 30, 2024).