A Zine of Two Cities — Laura Potter

A small publication based on two sets of souvenir postcards: Greetings from Oak Ridge and Memorial Sceneries from A-Bombed Hiroshima. Greetings from Oak Ridge is a collection of delicately coloured images depicting the development of Oak Ridge (Tennessee, USA), which was chosen as a production site for the Manhattan Project: the enormous operation that created the atomic bomb during World War 2. In stark contrast to the Oak Ridge souvenirs, Memorial Sceneries from A-Bombed Hiroshima features a set of black and white photographs taken some time after the nuclear bombing of Japan in July 1945. A Zine of Two Cities superimposes elements of the Greetings From imagery over Memorial Sceneries, creating a third (collaged) ‘souvenir’. Each collage is named for the underlying black and white image, although the visible titles are from the Oak Ridge cards.

*Peace Memorial Hall*
Digital collage; 2019

*Children’s Home Children’s Library*
Digital collage; 2019

Note: Many (but not all) of the Oak Ridge cards are marked (C) Copyright W. M. Cline. The W. M. Cline Company of Tennessee was formed in 1938 when William Cline began printing publishing postcards using images taken by himself and his father.