The Children of Chernobyl photo project was created between 2008 and 2012 during which time I visited the Ukraine roughly 10 times. The central idea was to explore the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl power plant disaster and its far reaching consequences some 30+ years later. My specific attention was directed at the ensuing health crisis in the Ukraine, specifically as it related to children.
My initial plan was to start out at Ground Zero and let the project evolve from there. But as it turned out, it was rather difficult to gain permission to visit the forbidden zone. It required a lot of patience and cautious finagling through the bureaucratic red tape. So I started with Kyiv instead and worked my way through all the hospitals in that city and through some of the orphanages within the country. And, at long last, I received permission to enter the Chernobyl dead zone. It was on September 11th of all dates when we finally drove up to the Chernobyl gate checkpoint for processing by local security officers. I must have had a heartbeat of 180…After close document examination, we were waved through to the forbidden zone.
This project would have never come about without the help of Darko Skulsky and Roman Kindrachuk of Radioaktive Film in Kyiv, a great deal of gratitude belongs to them for giving the project its initial impetus. But I am most indebted to Olena Nyzhnykevych, Director of the Children of Chernobyl Relief and Development Fund, without whom this project would have been virtually impossible. It was through her guidance, knowledge, perseverance and help that I was able to embark on this photographic journey in exploration of the most severe nuclear accident of the 20th century.
Furthermore, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Alexa J. Milanytch and Marta Stetsyk of the CCRDF for their valuable contributions to this project.
Checkpoint Charlie, as we called it, the first access point into the contaminated area. This is the checkpoint to cross into Zone IV. All in all, there are four contaminated zones, No.1 is the most severe, No. 4 the zone with the least amount of radiation.
This is the outer perimeter of the exclusion zone, and there is a second security fence encasing Zone I with the highest amount of radiation. This is also where the six reactors of the nuclear power plant are located.
Well, here it is. On September 11, 2009, standing outside reactor No. 4 before the new sarcophagus was being built. In the photograph with me is Dr. Nataliya Grytsyuk from the Ukrainian Institute of Agricultural Radiology. Her dosimeter reads 2.2 Roentgens per second (R/s). On average, the radiation around Chernobyl is 5.6 Roentgens/sec., a value almost a billion – 1,000,000,000 times more than the usual natural background radiation measured elsewhere.
Nikolai Lazarev, Deputy Director of the Institute of Agricultural Radiology and Nataliya’s boss drove us to the forbidden zone. As the director of the institute, his job is to take soil samples in the four contaminated zones once a month and analyse them for radioactivity. This was our ticket into the contaminated zones of Chernobyl, Nikolai and Nataliya were kind enough to let us join them on their monthly scientific excursion.