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Chernobyl has been devoured by nature; these photographs show the decline of the exclusion zone

2019-09-13T08:31:41.300Z


The images of photographer David McMillan provide a surprising look at a ghost town virtually intact since the disaster, while exploring the enduring power of nature and l ...


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(CNN) - When photographer David McMillan first visited the city of Pripyat in 1994, he expected his movements to be restricted. Just eight years earlier, a reactor at the nearby Chernobyl nuclear power plant had exploded, forcing an evacuation throughout the region and sending radioactive rain throughout Europe.

However, the photographer was not only free to roam the Chernobyl exclusion zone of 1,600 square kilometers, which remains largely uninhabited until today, but was able to approach meters of the damaged reactor.

"The challenge was to find people who could get me," he recalled in a telephone interview. “I didn't know where to go; I was at the mercy of the drivers and my interpreter. ”

I didn't have a real sense (of danger), "he added." People simply advised me that some areas were heavily polluted and that maybe I should only take a minute or two to photograph there. "

This initial trip resulted in a series of creepy images documenting abandoned buildings, playgrounds, and abandoned vehicles after cleaning. It also aroused a curiosity that, during the next quarter of a century, would bring the Canadian photographer back to the region more than 20 times.

Now, 200 of his photos will be published in the next book, Growth and Decay: Pripyat and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone . They provide a surprising look at a ghost town virtually intact since the disaster, while exploring the enduring power of nature and the inevitability of decline.

Remains of an 'exhibition' city

Pripyat, in present-day Ukraine, was part of the Soviet Union at the time of the catastrophe in April 1986. Built in the previous decade to serve the power plant and its workers, the city was home to around 50,000 people .

"It must have been beautiful," said McMillan, who studied archival images of the area. “At that time, it was considered one of the best cities to live in the Soviet Union. There were many schools and hospitals and facilities for sports and culture, so it was an exhibition city. ”

McMillan photographed the same point several times.

These comforts are now abandoned, being victims of decomposition, rust and looting. Many of McMillan's photos, whether they show empty pools or deserted churches, reveal how suddenly the city was evacuated.

"In schools, it feels like the students had left in the afternoon," he said. "There were still teacher registration books, textbooks, student artwork and things like that."

The buildings served as a kind of time capsules. The images that show faded portraits of Marx and Engels or Lenin's bust in a neglected courtyard capture a particular moment in political history.

LOOK : The president of Ukraine wants to give “a new life” to Chernobyl

But they also demonstrate the power of time. In some cases, McMillan photographed the same place several times, over many years, to highlight the deterioration of the built environment.

One of the most powerful examples is a series of images taken on a kindergarten staircase. The first, captured in 1994, represents brightly colored flags of the former Soviet republics attached to a detached wall. At the time of the last photograph, taken last November, there is only one left, and it has been so damaged and discolored that it could not even be recognized.

“If you see it, you wouldn't know what it was; you wouldn't even know that it could have been the representation of a flag, ”said McMillan. "It seemed like a symbol of the way our own memory of the Soviet era is fading into history."

Photos of playgrounds and slides also provide relevant symbols of the passage of time. The children who once played there will now be between 30 and 40 years old.

"Going to some of the kindergartens, where there were so many remains of children, and knowing that the incidence of thyroid cancer shot up due to the accident, triggered a different type of (emotional response)."

But probably an inevitable one, and I resist saying this, beauty (of decay), ”he added. "I have discovered that the walls have matured."

The return of nature

As the title of his book, Growth and Decay , suggests, McMillan is concerned with both the withdrawal of humanity and the reappearance of nature. The landscapes in his photos, although gloomy, feature flowering plants and trees that explode through man-made structures.

"People were not close, and when nature was not being cut and cultivated, it simply became wild and recovered itself," said the photographer. "I guess it was encouraging to see this kind of growth, and inevitable to see the culture disappear."

"There has been a repopulation of animals and someone even told me that bird watching is one of the best in Europe."

LOOK : Chernobyl, a ghost town full of tourists

McMillan's images also show portraits of people he found in the Exclusion Zone, including engineers, workers and scientists who hunt wild animals to measure radiation in their organs. An image, taken in 1995, shows a woman who returns to her village to clean ancestral graves.

Having met so many returnees, McMillan is relatively relaxed about the possible implications for his own health. Now 73, he usually visits one week at a time, which means that months have passed cumulatively within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

One of his original guides contracted lymphoma since leaving Ukraine to Canada, although the photographer said it is unclear if the fault is radiation.

"What happens with radiation is that it is intangible," McMillan said. “When I brought a dosimeter with me once, (the radiation levels) were very irregular. They were not the same throughout the Exclusion Zone, it is very variable ”.

READ : Inside Slavutych, the city created by the Chernobyl explosion

As pollution decreases with each passing year, so does the risk, the photographer explained. A newly built "sarcophagus" (known as Chernobyl New Safe Confinement) now encloses the reactor, replacing the temporary concrete wrapper first built in 1986 to contain the consequences.

Tourists are also an increasingly common image, according to McMillan, who sometimes meets buses on day trips from the capital of Ukraine, Kiev. Last year, a group of artists even starred in an electronic party in Pripyat, and the site quickly became what the photographer called a "kind of black Disneyland."

"There are people who live in some (nearby) areas that are less polluted, so I have never worried," he said.

LOOK : Vodka made in Chernobyl, would you dare to try it?

“Now, a more real danger is that buildings collapse. Sometimes they seem delicate (and) when you go through them, you just don't know what could happen. ”

Chernobyl

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2019-09-13

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