Remembering the Future; Nuclear Testing, Rising Seas, and The Marshall Islands

A collaboration between photographer Mark Klett and writer, art critic, and cultural geographer William L. Fox, this book emerged out of expeditions the two men were a part of in 2023 and 2024 to the Republic of the Marshall Islands, a remote nation in the mid-Pacific.

The book extends the work of their previous collaboration, The Half Life of History (Radius Books, 2011), engaging the RMI’s devastating nuclear legacy after WWII, and continues into the present with the existential threat of climate change. Weaving together historic images with photographs Klett took on these trips and Fox’s writings in the form of both narrative journal entries and a series of short essays, the project uses the case study of this small island nation to consider future implications of nuclear testing and accelerating climate crises for the entire planet.

Mark Klett (b. 1952) uses photography to explore landscape, history, and the passage of time. He considers human activity part of the natural landscape, and his photographs of human interaction with the land use formal beauty to invite critical reflection of the spectator. His background includes working as a geologist before turning to photography. Klett has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Japan/US Friendship Commission. His work has been exhibited in the US and internationally and is held in over eighty museum collections worldwide. Klett is also the author/co-author of nineteen books, including Radius projects Drowned River: The Death and Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado (2018), El Camino del Diablo (2016), The Half-Life of History, the Atomic Bomb, and Wendover Air Base (2011), and Saguaros (2007). He is Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University.

William L. Fox is founding Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, Nevada, and has variously been called an art critic, science writer, and cultural geographer. He has published sixteen books on cognition and landscape, hundreds of essays in art monographs, magazines and journals, and fifteen collections of poetry. His most recent book is Michael Heizer: The Once and Future Monuments (2019). Fox is also an artist who has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows in eight countries since 1974. Fox has researched and written books set in the Antarctic, the Arctic, Chile, Nepal, and other locations. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Artforum, and Nature. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and National Science Foundation. He has been a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute, Clark Art Institute, the Australian National University, National Museum of Australia, and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.