The British Broadcasting Corporation stopped by the Baltimore War Memorial to view Afterimage Requiem, check out the story below.

Two artists have collaborated on a new art project that reflects their grandfathers’ shared history on opposing sides of a tragic conflict.

When Kei Ito and Andrew Paul Keiper first met as graduate students at the Maryland Institute College of Art, they discovered that their grandfathers were on opposite sides of a shared conflict: Ito’s grandfather survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and Keiper’s grandfather was an engineer on the Manhattan Project, which created the bomb. 

Ito and Keiper realised the potential for collaboration, and worked together to create Afterimage Requiem, an art installation currently being showcased at the Baltimore War Memorial.

Their haunting work evokes the before and after of the A-bomb, and asks viewers not only to ponder the impact it had on both men and their families, but to think about how it reflects on us today.

“We hope in that title [Afterimage Requiem] to evoke a sense that this is an event that happened in the past but the piece is very much about our current situation,” explains Keiper. “We are in the midst of a nuclear crisis, the likes of which, and the severity of which we have not experienced in my lifetime.”

A video the BBC produced can be seen here.