Pripyat

'Once a flourishing young city home to 50,000 people, today only a hollow, distant memory.'

Ghost Town

‘ON 26TH OF APRIL, 1986, AT 1.24 AM CHERNOBYL’S UNIT 4 REACTOR EXPLODED AFTER STAFF DISABLED SAFETY SYSTEMS

AND PERFORMED AN ILL-ADVISED EXPERIMENT TO CHECK – IRONICALLY ENOUGH – THE REACTOR’S SAFETY.’

Mark Lynas

P ripyat is an abandoned Ukranian town near the northern border with Belarus. The ghost town received its name from the adjacent Pripyat river. The town was founded in 1970 and exclusively built to house the support personell of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Pripyat provided housing for 50.000 people, featured 15 kindergartens, 1 elementary school, 5 secondary schools, 25 stores, 1 mall, and a grand total of 27 cafes, cafeterias, and restaurants. It even had an amusement park with a ferris wheel and an autodrome. To live and work in Pripyat was considered a privilege. If you resided in Pripyat in the early 80s, you had it made within the Soviet context. And then the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history happened.

Ghost Town

I n Pripyat you will find ample graffiti on the dilapidated walls of what once were buildings. Some are big murals, others small individual paintings that differ in color, technique and style.

Some hold the view that it is a desecration of a grave, others believe it is a form of modern art in an urban environment.

‘THE GREATEST CRIMES IN THE WORLD ARE NOT COMMITTED BY PEOPLE BREAKING THE RULES BUT BY PEOPLE FOLLOWING THE RULES.’

Banksy

Ghost Town

The Gym

This was the main center for sports and recreation in Pripyat at the time. This gymnasium and the Azure Swimming Pool were used until the late 90s by plant workers, scientists and administrators still working in the Zone. The facility was finally shut down in 1998. Now, like everything else in Pripyat, it has been completely looted and trashed. Only a rusty, broken-down shell remains.

PROJECTThe Children of Chernobyl

LocationChernobyl, Ukraine

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