Pentagram designer uses his own blood to create poster marking Hiroshima Nagasaki

We imagine many Pentagram projects have been the result of blood, sweat and tears, but perhaps none so literally as Harry Pearce’s poster for the Questioning the Bomb exhibition launching at the Art Gallery of Maryland next month. Harry used his own blood to create the image for the poster, which marks 70 years since the twin nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. “The visual idea and the line came simultaneously. I was looking at ink drops underwater, for a completely different project, and when I turned the picture upside down I saw the mushroom cloud,” says Harry. “I felt compelled to use my own blood dropped into water, coupled with the line,  ‘Its all our blood’ in answer to the exhibition’s title – Questioning the Bomb.”

Photographer Richard Foster meticulously planned the shoot following days of experimenting with ink, water temperatures, drop heights and real human blood. Oh, and Harry’s GP got involved, to do the actual blood-taking. Harry says: “The title comes from my belief that what we do to others we are really doing to ourselves, and Damocles’ Sword still hangs firmly over all our heads.”