CHERNOBYL

In the eleven days following the Chernobyl disaster on 26 April 1986, more than 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area surrounding the nuclear power plant. Declared uninhabitable, the exclusion zones included the cities of Pripyat and Chernobyl. In May 2001, Robert Polidori photographed what was left in this dead zone. His richly detailed images take us from the burnt-out control room of reactor 4, where technicians set up the experiment that caused the disaster, to the unfinished apartment complexes, ransacked schools and abandoned kindergartens that remain as testimony to those who once called Pripyat home. Nearby, trucks and tanks used in clean-up operations rest in a graveyard of cars, some covered in lead covers and others robbed of parts. Houseboats and barges rust in the contaminated waters of the Pripyat River. Foliage grows on the pavements and hides the modest houses of the small town of Chernobyl. Polidori captures the faded colours and desolate atmosphere of Pripyat and Chernobyl in his large-scale photographs. His images are haunting documents that present the reader with a rare view not only of a disastrous event, but of a place and the people who lived there.