Sydney Armageddon

I saw this album cover when I was about nine years old. It’s Midnight Oil’s ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’ from 1984.

I have never listened to the album but I was so struck by the cover art that it has stayed with me.

Only recently have I discovered the artist who created this amazing scene of nuclear Armageddon in Sydney. He was a Japanese artist named Tsunehisa Kimura, who created this nuclear cratered vision of Sydney Harbour via photo montage, six years before Photoshop 1.0.

It would have been painstaking work, he had an incredible eye for detail. This was the biggest version I could find on the net. I also found the image below. He passed away in 2008.

Enjoy!