Peace is our Profession

Nav­i­gat­ing Cri­sis with Confidence

Open­ing 29. May 2026

Vin­tage orig­i­nal photographs

Peter Voigt

Strangelove Col­lec­tion

The title derives from the sur­re­al mot­to of the US nuclear arse­nal — lat­er a back­drop in Stan­ley Kubrick­’s Dr. Strangelove (1964), a caus­tic satire on the log­ic of the Cold War. Peter Voigt’s work draws on his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs of nuclear tech­nol­o­gy and rock­et research from the 1940s to 1970s. In Peace is Our Pro­fes­sion he arranges this mate­r­i­al into new image sequences and visu­al nar­ra­tives. The method lies in jux­ta­po­si­tion: through group­ing, sequenc­ing and coun­ter­point, pat­terns become vis­i­ble that remain hid­den in indi­vid­ual images. What emerges is the stag­ing behind the doc­u­men­ta­tion. Senior mil­i­tary fig­ures pose with phal­lic rock­et mod­els. Civil­ians prac­tice duck-and-cov­er, trust­ing pro­to­cols that now read as tragi­com­ic. These images were nev­er neu­tral. They were pro­pa­gan­da, self-assur­ance, the­atre. The absur­di­ty is not a side effect — it is the method. Trump fan­ta­sis­es about nuclear test­ing. Arms man­u­fac­tur­ers boom. The absur­di­ty of then is the pol­i­tics of now. Peace is Our Pro­fes­sion offers no con­sol­ing images. It expos­es the belief sys­tems and col­lec­tive illu­sions that con­tin­ue to sus­tain the atom­ic age.