Workers wearing plastic suits and respirators for protection pause on their way to drill holes for support rods inside the shaky concrete sarcophagus, a structure hastily built after the explosion to isolate the radioactive rubble of Reactor No. 4. They keep the deteriorating enclosure standing until a replacement can be built. Radiation inside is so high that they are allowed to work only one shift of 15 minutes per day.
Los Angeles-based photographer Gerd Ludwig has been going back to Chernobyl, site of the 1986 nuclear explosion in Ukraine, for the past 20 years to document the severe and long-lasting impact it has had on the people and places inside the exclusion zone up till today.
He first visited the city in 1993 on a National Geographic assignment, when access was highly restricted, and back again in 2005, where he was allowed only 15 minutes in Reactor No.4, due to the deadly levels of pollution. He described the experience, “I knew that I had less than 15 minutes to capture impacting images of an environment that few have ever seen and that I might never access again. The adrenaline surge was extraordinary.”
Even though it is highly dangerous, the photographer does it out of responsibility to those who continue to suffer the impacts of the disaster. He explained in an interview with Slate Magazine, “While covering this story, I met many caring and courageous people who allowed me to expose their suffering. They generally realize that me showing their fate is not going to change their life any more. However, many of them wanted their situation to be known solely in the hope of contributing to the cause that tragedies like Chernobyl may be prevented in the future”.
He is currently raising funds on Kickstarter to publish the images in a photo book entitled ‘The Long Shadow Of Chernobyl’.
Kharytina Desha, 92, is one of the few people who have returned to their village homes inside the exclusion zone. Although surrounded by devastation and isolation, she prefers to die on her own soil.
Chairs, toys, and gas masks in an abandoned kindergarten classroom. Fewer buildings now bear witness to the hasty departure of their former residents; instead, there are signs of the visitors’ need to simplify the message. Most noticeably, dolls, like this one carefully arranged next to a gas mask, have become the standard motif.
On April 26, 1986, operators in this control room of Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant committed a fatal series of errors during a safety test, triggering a reactor meltdown that resulted in the world's largest nuclear accident to date.
Suffering from thyroid cancer, Oleg Shapiro, 54, and Dima Bogdanovich, 13, receive care at a thyroid hospital in Minsk, Belarus. As a liquidator who helped clean up the accident, Oleg was exposed to extreme levels of radiation. This was his third thyroid operation. Dima’s mother claims that Chernobyl’s nuclear fallout is responsible for her son’s cancer, but Belarusian officials are often instructed to downplay the severity of the radiation.
Severely physically and mentally handicapped, 5-year-old Igor was given up by his parents and now lives at a children’s mental asylum, which cares for abandoned and orphaned children with disabilities. It is one of several such facilities in rural southern Belarus receiving support from Chernobyl Children International.
When Soviet authorities finally ordered the evacuation, residents’ hasty departure often meant leaving behind their most personal belongings. The Soviet Union didn't admit that an accident had occurred until two days after the explosion, when the nuclear fallout cloud reached Sweden and scientists there noticed contamination on their shoes before entering their own nuclear power plant.
The force of the Chernobyl explosions literally stopped time: The rusty clock inside this room in Reactor No. 4 indicates the time of the explosion. Nearly three decades later, radiation here is still so high that access is limited to a few brief seconds.
The empty schools and kindergarten rooms in Pripyat—once the largest town in the exclusion zone with 50,000 inhabitants—are still a silent testament to the sudden and tragic departure. Due to decay, this section of the school building has collapsed.
The evacuated city of Pripyat, once brimming with life, is now a chilling ghost town. For an exiled resident, the stillness of a city boulevard stirs memories of her former life. In her hand is an old photo of the same street years earlier.
[via Slate Magazine, images via Gerd Ludwig]