Between July and November 1962 the US is known to have conducted 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests. After the Limited Test Ban Treaty between the US and the Soviet Union in 1963, nuclear testing went underground. It became literally invisible - but more frequent: the US conducted a further 723 underground tests until 1992.
100 Suns documents the era of visible nuclear testing, the atmospheric era, with 100 photographs drawn from the archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the US National Archives in Maryland. It includes previously classified material from clandestine Lookout Mountain Air Force Station based in Hollywood, whose film directors, cameramen, and still photographers were sworn to secrecy.
The title 100 Suns refers to the response by J. Robert Oppenheimer to the world's first nuclear explosion in New Mexico when he quoted a passage from Bhagavad Gita, the classic Vedic text, "If a radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds".