Two years of my life. Five trips to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Over a month in total. Weeks of trying to get authorisations, permits, approvals ‒ not always successfully. That’s when I send in friends who can do more than me, but when even they fail, I go in anyway. Like Stalker from the Strugatsky brothers’ book, or Major Degtyarev from the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
I get into my off-road vehicle. I go everywhere in this. I’ve crossed the wilds of Africa, and I’ll even cross the radioactive zone. I make it to the most inaccessible and most dangerous places. Sometimes this results in forced decontamination, but it’s only a machine, it won’t get sick. I also decontaminate myself often ‒ all the residents of the zone give me home-made vodka to try.
To see the zone from the air, from a wider perspective, I board a well-worn Mi-2. Instead of individual tower blocks, cottages and equipment, I see whole abandoned villages, thousands of abandoned machines. I see the whole of Pripyat. A ghost town. It leaves a truly electrifying impression.
There’s some places you just cannot reach in a big helicopter. It is either too risky or prohibited by state regulations. For these locations, I use a remote-controlled drone. It allows me to get really close. I can see more. The impossible is rendered possible.
On the way I meet the re-settlers, the last inhabitants of the closed zone. I hear their stories about a carefree life, the beautiful Pripyat. About times gone by, their dreams, what they miss. It’s moving to listen to the stories of forced re-settlement, losing homes, property, loved ones. About illness and death. I’ve long since stopped believing that 30 fire-fighters and plant workers were the only fatalities of the nuclear catastrophe.
I visit closed sites, inaccessible to others. Rosocha: the biggest storage yard of radioactive vehicles. The nuclear power plant, where an unsuccessful experiment led to a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale. I go into the control room of block 4 ‒ the place where everything started from, where history changed its course. I also visit Chernobyl-2 and one of the most important elements of the system for early warning against nuclear attack: the DUGA over-the-horizon radar. This time I focus on the command centre ‒ military buildings and tools for analysing signals collected from the antennae.
I comb the zone in search of radioactive traces of the catastrophe. In the basement of a flooded laboratory in the Jupiter factory I find a mysterious radioactive substance. But that’s only the beginning, a warm-up. Then I go to the Red Forest, the most radioactive place in the zone. I have no problem finding fragments of fuel from the destroyed reactor.
Radioactive land and buildings. Plants and animals. Radiation is all around me, invisible, silent and impossible to sense in any way. But that’s not the only risk I face. Climbing up high structures, antennae, cooling tower or cranes. I’ll remember the view of the abandoned city, zone and plant for the rest of my life.
I’m never away from my camera; it’s mounted on my helmet. So everyone, not just me, can see the zone. The real zone and not only the places where official guides take you. To hear what the real inhabitants of the zone have to say and not dry statistics from institutions promoting nuclear energy. So that everyone can imagine what’s happening in Japan right now or what could happen wherever nuclear plants are, or will be, operating.
The zone is huge. I never know what the next day will bring. What I’ll uncover, where I’ll end up or who I’ll meet. My GPS system helps me find interesting places and remember their coordinates. It also enables me to return home safely. The dosimeter allows me to avoid many dangerous places where radioactive waste is hidden. It helps me keep a safe distance. I would never go anywhere without these two pieces of equipment.
This is a shortened version of the film/photo project.
@fiftyone_eggs - this is not a commercial project. All the money from Alone 1 went to re-settlers in Chernobyl and from Alone 2 will go to fund similar project about Fukushima.
I still remember Chernobyl disaster. I was 14 years old at the time when lessons were suddenly interrupted and we were brought into the hallway. There we found dozens of evenly arranged brown bottles full of an unknown liquid already waiting for us. Later I find out that they gave us a liquid iodine solution which was to prevent the absorption of radioactive iodine isotopes. Since those events my ties with the disaster still remain close and unbreakable.
The initial actions of the Soviet government at the time, dependant on limiting access to information, falsifying the actual levels of contamination and disregarding the threat, led to the situation that to this day scientists do not agree on the actual extent and effects of the disaster. For this reason, the reliability of the majority of scientific reports that arose later is difficult to verify and evaluate, especially since many of them were prepared or financed by organizations promoting nuclear energy.
The difficulty in achieving precise and credible data and the lack of objectivity led me to attempt to tackle the problem of looking for causes, effects and guilty parties of the disaster in a completely different way. I decided that the viewers themselves, who I would bring to the centre of these events, would decide for themselves. I will show the current state of the zone, enable access to closed places and structures and interviews with residents. I will be a transparent mediator between the zone and the viewer. Without projecting any opinion or drawing conclusions. All of that must be the task for the viewers.
I also wanted to get young viewers who don’t remember these events, and whose knowledge is completely based on games interested in the disaster. The most popular of these, Call of Duty and STALKER, take place around Chernobyl and make use of the first person perspective technique. Deciding to mount the camera on my helmet, I wanted to achieve a similar effect in which the player/viewer sees the world of the game/film from the first person perspective, that is, through the eyes of the hero. Thanks to this solution, the realism and dramatic tension of the film are increased and the viewers gain the impression of finding themselves at the centre of the action and places thus far known only from games. And through this they will have the chance to learn more about the disaster itself.
Ah-freaking-MAZING... Only 8 photos, but the hard work I can only imagine that went into your exploration of Chernobyl... I have no more words to say other than THANK YOU for doing what many of us only dream of.
You totally risked life and limb to climb that cooling tower. I see how poor of condition that ladder was in...let alone all the free floating and loose rebar at the top. What kind of readings did your geiger counter get in the different areas of the city. From my understanding some levels of radioactivity are still present. Are you not afraid of protecting your arms or your eyes? I saw in some of the video clips and photos you have exposures, as well as the woman spotter and your drone pilot. Maybe there is no radioactivity threat??
Only because I don't believe the local government agencies around here are telling us Californians the truth about radiation coming from Japan.
I strongly dislike Nuclear power and everything that comes with it. I'm very thankful for your photos and explore and the videos of your drone flights, it truly does take me to a place in which I would never go myself for fear of radioactivity. And for this reason, you have achieved the goal that your project set out to accomplish. You've intrigued me and motivated me to continue researching Chernobyl and learning as much as I can.
Thank you again and I can't wait to read more about your work. please continue updating this thread if you can!!
Ethics
