The Photographs in this post were taken by my workmate Dave Richards (Thomas Alleyne's High School), when he visited Chernobyl in September 2013.  I have always been fascinated by the history and the events surrounding the infamous nuclear disaster and will go there myself one day, when my kids have been annexed and I convince the wife it’s a good idea.

 

Dave took some excellent shots, and I was grateful that he shared them with me.  He took

many photographs in his short time there, and out of the many shots that Dave photographed, we picked a few and developed/ collaged them together using Photoshop. 

I asked Dave to see them because I have never been there myself and I wanted to show my students examples of quality documentary photography- and how images could show the history of an event / occasion.  I was also looking to find images that went beyond the conventional document and capture something beyond the obvious.  In this case I hoped to view images that captured the sombre atmosphere of the Chernobyl landscape alongside making you empathise with the events that transpired.

 

Dave`s most powerful images were the ones that weren’t directly from/near the reactor, but from the surrounding areas. They show the devastation and desolation in a very haunting and poignant way.  The hanging rope in an abandoned School sports hall and a dilapidated swimming pool made me think about the younger generation in Chernobyl and how they were affected. 

 

I was particularly drawn to the image of the doctor’s surgery and how the devastation of the event is shown in a more subtle way. The image has got many familiar elements/objects that anyone would be familiar with seeing in a waiting room.  However, the ruined chairs, tables and token ornamental plant all play on your sense of memory and own experience of waiting rooms as well as indicating the scale and damage caused.

 

Documentary photography is at it’s best when it is used to enthuse viewers to find out more and think about an important historic event without being forced to. The Chernobyl Nuclear disaster is a subject that is still very much in the forefront of many peoples’ thoughts, especially so following the Fukushima Daiichi disaster of 2011.

 

Dave also told me about the photographer, Igor Kostin who originally photographed the event shortly after it happened in 1986.  He took some phenomenally challenging images, many of which were directly affected by the radiation which was physically recorded on the film – which when process was pitted and distressed where it had been radiated away.

In the last images, I have made a few mock-ups of one of Dave`s ideas with a little bit of a twist. His idea was to combine images that he had taken from Chernobyl with photographs and video captures from the same / similar locations- before and after the event. 

 

Big Thanks to Dave, for letting me use his images- i`m hoping that he`ll make his own Behance so he can share his photos with everyone –and I hope that viewers of this post remember the tragedy, so the memory of the event lives on.