News Release

Photo exhibit, lectures mark anniversary of TMI

February 24, 2009

A photo exhibit profiling the people of Three Mile Island highlights March public events at Penn State Harrisburg marking the 30th anniversary of the nuclear accident at TMI.

The month-long photo exhibit, a March 23 lecture by its creator Robert Del Tredici, and a March 30 discussion on “Nuclear Renaissance or Relapse” research are all free and open to the public. For information, phone 717-948-6056. The exhibit and lecture were coordinated by Humanities Reference Librarian and Archivist Heidi Abbey.

Organized by Associate Professor of Community Psychology and Social Change Holly Angelique, the exhibit and lectures are ingredients in her graduate-level course entitled Current Topics in Social Science: TMI, Democracy, and You which she has opened to the public.

The 30-photo exhibit will be available on the first floor of library March 16 to April 30 during hours of operation –  Monday through Thursday, 7:45 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday, 7:45 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Sunday, 1 p.m. to 11 p.m.

“Since the entire midstate was impacted by the TMI situation in 1979, this outreach to the community is designed to support the college’s commitment to share its educational resources with the external public as we mark the anniversary of the nation’s worst commercial nuclear disaster,” Angelique points out.

She continues, “With its depth of faculty expertise and research, Penn State Harrisburg is well-positioned to host these events which bring activists, scholars, and artists together to remember this important moment on our history and to provide a forum for the exchange of thought on the issues. By bringing to life the voices and faces of our community, we hope to share with the world our strength as individuals and families who endured those stressful days three decades ago. The need to remember the past offers us important lessons for today and for the future.”

Originally an acclaimed pen-and-ink artist, Del Tredici has turned into the nation’s lead chronicler of “things nuclear” through his photos and accompanying books. He will discuss his photography and books from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Student Center of the Capital Union Building. “We have literally brought onto earth a kind of cosmic energy that the planet has not seen before, made from elements the planet has not had before … using radiation that we do not understand,” he writes of nuclear power. “Everything is off the scale for people who refer to things in a basically Newtonian framework … The biggest riddle of this whole issue is how to get a grip on it; how to wrap your imagination around it.”

His attempt to solve that riddle by using his camera to create a new “visual vocabulary” for the nuclear age began in 1979 when he went to Three Mile Island and Middletown to photograph and interview people who lived through the nuclear reactor accident. Over the next year, he made a dozen trips into the region and spent hundreds of hours interviewing residents and taking photographs. The Sierra Club published his work as The People of Three Mile Island in 1980. Buoyed by the success of his first effort, del Tredici then spent six years profiling the nation’s nuclear weapons industry, culminating in the acclaimed At Work in the Fields of the Bomb. He continues to document the nuclear age through his photos and writings.

His photo exhibit is made possible by the Penn State Harrisburg library with his lecture supported by TMI alert and the schools of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences and Education.

On March 30 at noon in the Gallery Lounge of the Olmsted Building, Penn State Harrisburg graduate Marci Culley will discuss her most current research with Angelique which focuses on two nuclear cities – Middletown and Waynesboro, Ga. Culley, who holds a master’s in Community Psychology and Social Change from the college and is now a faculty member at Georgia State University, will profile the situations in the two towns – one with a question of relicensing an existing nuclear power plant and the other facing the expansion of an existing facility.