With the recent 25th anniversary of the April 26 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, I have been reading several books lately to learn more about this event and what its long-term effects have been.
Built in 1970 as a bedroom community for employees of the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Pripyat was completely evacuated when a massive explosion occurred at the plant's No. 4 reactor. Residents were told they were only leaving for a few days, and were not permitted to take anything with them when they left. Similar instructions were given to the residents of the city of Chornobyl and of neighboring villages. Published in 2003, Zones of Exclusion is Polidori's photographic record of how the area has changed (and how it has remained frozen in time) in the following 25 years. Some of the most striking photos are of an amusement park, never used, that had been scheduled to open on May Day, just days after the nuclear plant disaster. Also interesting was the obvious way in which the city's plant life was, little by little, returning the town to forest.
While I enjoyed looking through these images, I was disappointed by the fact that this book, like so much other literature on the Zones of Exclusion, talks about how the area has been "untouched by humans" for the past 25 years, but other books I've read recently (specifically Voices from Chernobyl and Wormwood Forest) make mention of former residents, profiteers and vandals returning to the area to collect everything from family mementos to car parts to sell on the black market. Looking at these photos, I can't help wondering how much of what I'm seeing is the result of nature taking back the area, and how much is just the result of vandalism and theft.
link to a similar photo montage
amazon
No comments:
Post a Comment