Text by Neal Slavin, Copyright 2023
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An Assignment That is Hard to Forget
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As the movie Oppenheimer is about to be launched I wrestle with thoughts and feelings I’ve had since 1987. In that year I was commissioned by the Washington Post Magazine to create a Neal Slavin Groups page comprised of Washington based Groups. I was introduced to Molly Roberts, the Picture Editor and together over the next two years we created 79 Group Portraits which ran on the back page every week under the title NEAL SLAVIN’S GROUPS. While there were many portraits that remain embedded in my mind the one pictured here remains the most potent. The picture is called AIRCRAFT RESTORATION TECHNICIANS. It ran on 9 August 1987. If you look closely you will see the technicians working on the outside of the famous/infamous airplane called the ENOLA GAY the airplane that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I remember walking up to the plane, looking at all the hand painted graffiti outside the fuselage wishing the men aboard good luck on their mission; (of course the grafftti was much more direct, specific and lurid than I describe here).
Looking for a location from which to shoot, my assistant Steve Hall and I decided to shoot from inside the cockpit looking out at the restorers. We were told we were the first civilians to enter the interior of the plane as restoration was still being completed. I remember trying to make sense of my feelings as we continued the shoot. I remember talking to Steve to check his feelings and his matched mine.
More recently as I think about the experience shooting this picture I found a position taken by “Revisionist” scholars which posits that Japan was ready to surrender and that the use of the bombs could have been avoided if Emperor Hirohito could remain on his throne. What would have happened to his people is not knowable but the unleashing of the atomic age where we could extinguish entire civilizations with one or two bombs might have been avoided. Man’s cruelty to man is hard to talk about; it’s legendary, but talking about history that didn’t happen is wishful thinking because it looks back. Civilization’s role is to look forward. I just remember the sickening, quizzical feeling I got sitting in the Enola Gay’s cockpit.
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About The Author: Neal Slavin is a world renowned photographer and film maker based in New York City. To learn more about Neal Slavin, access his web site here: https://nealslavin.com/