I visited Chernobyl in May 2013. I spent 6 days in the exclusion zone and visited a number of locations in Pripyat that were not generally explored at the time. I also made an excursion nearly to the border of Belarus to visit an abandoned town and church that served as a memorial for the local people.
Chernobyl has been on my bucket list of places to photograph ever since I can remember. Around 2012 I was actively shooting, but really not seeing a lot of great location in the western United States. I happened to get connected with a Polish film maker who was looking for other documentarians to accompany him on his regular trips. Now this was before the HBO miniseries and Chernobyl was definitely not often visited. We had to show proof of “press” type intentions, I don’t really remember any other tour groups being offered at the time.
I had a list of sites I wanted to photograph, but logistics were a bit complex. We had a government assigned guide who was to watch us at all times. Certain areas, like the Duga Antenna and Reactor Assembly Building required some negotiation with local security teams. Not speaking Russian I didn’t know exactly how this went down, but we did have time limited access in a number of locations.
Shooting large format film in this type of extreme environment is a challenge! I only was able to bring 20 or so film holders, so I had to budget my shots. Each night at the hotel I would exchange exposed for unexposed film in my changing bag. Over 6 days I made approximately 130 exposures, some of those were duplicates, a few were fogged for some reason or another. My final edit was around 10 shots that I chose for my gallery exhibition “Industria”.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary I have put up raw, unedited media from the trip. I wasn’t a prolific “snapper” at the time. My main goal was to capture the location on 4×5 film in order to produce silver gelatin prints. Those prints and related shows can be seen here on my website. This is more of a documentation post, to gather the other related media all in one place for posterity if you will.
Chernobyl Slideshow
Snapshots From the Zone
We spent 6 days photographing in the zone. We slept in Chernobyl at the small inn, ate at the mess hall along with the workers, and bought supplies from the small canteen. Here are some snaps that I took along the way.
Analog Photography In the Zone
My primary camera on this trip was a KB Canham DLC45, 4×5 inch film view camera. I shot both Kodak Tmax100 and a little Kodak Tr-X320. These are the raw scans, no edits. Normally I would ruthlessly edit these down to just the images I felt best portrayed the feeling of the place, and my response to it. The negative is the raw ingredients I use to create the final product which is a fine art, silver gelatin photograph. I share these as a documentation of how the scene was for those interested.
I hope you enjoy this flashback 13 years after my visit. Visiting Ukraine, Kiev, and the exclusion zone was a bucket list item for me as an avid photographer of abandoned and unique locations. The meaning of that visit has changed now, as Ukraine has been thrust onto the international stage as it defends it’s borders. It’s true what the say, seize the day, take the shot because tomorrow it may not be there!