Art Info

Warhead 1 (Reagan 55%, Brezhnev 45%, Thatcher less than 1%, Mitterand less than 1%, Deng less than 1%) ,
Nancy Burson, 1982

Materials: Gelatin silver print

Dimensions: 35.56 x 27.94 cm, 14 x 11 inches

Ed. 10/15

Signed, dated, in black ink, recto

Nancy Burson produced some of the earliest computer-generated portraits, and in collaboration with MIT engineers Richard Carling and David Kramlich, became a pioneer in the now familiar territory of computer-manipulated imagery.

In Warhead, Burson took the leaders of the countries with the largest nuclear stockpiles in the world and blended them into a composite portrait, weighting each photograph's contribution to the composite by the size of his or her stockpile. In the early 1980s, the heads of state in question would have been Leonid Brezhnev, Deng Xiaoping, Francois Mitterand, Ronal Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The ratio would be about 55 percent Reagan, 45 percent Brezhnev and less than 1 percent for the other three. Nancy Burson giving a chilling face to the nuclear nightmare under which this generation lived.

£2,300