I’ll like to share with you a photoreportage of sort that moved me.

The author is Elena Filatova, a Russian woman who travels and documents the Chernobyl area since several years. She rides on her motorbike and thus can explore roads that cars cannot.

Chernobyl history

I was 12 years old when it happened. Here, in West Europa, little information did spread from Russia, which was still URSS and a very closed country, as most of the East was. Little did we know how serious the disaster was. Even now, we still don’t know how many died, unofficial sources claim 400’000 people, maybe more. We’ll never know. And more than twenty years after, it’s gone from our memories. Mostly.

Comment from Elena:

The day after the accident, this place on the bridge provided a good view of the gaping crack in the nuclear containment vessel that was ruptured by the explosion. Many curious people came here to have a look and were bathed in a flood of deadly x-rays emanating directly from the glowing nuclearcore.

Original here.

Here is what Wikipedia says about it, in case you really forgot or never heard about.

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union). It is considered to be the worst nuclear power plant disaster in history and the only level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale. It resulted in a severe release of radioactivity following a massive power excursion that destroyed the reactor. Most deaths from the accident were caused by radiation poisoning.

Source here.

Elena

I have no idea why the author is travelling through these dead countries. But a few things moved me, for reasons I cannot name.

Visit her website and digg (yeah, really digg) for informations and photos.

Comment from Elena:

It is really Plutonium that will reign here for thousands of years. It is extremely toxic and highly chemically reactive, half-life of Plutonium-239 is over 24,000 years. Plutonium is appropriately named after Pluto, god of the dead and ruler of the underworld.

Source here.

The quality of the photos is not the subject here, for most where taken more than 20 years ago and surely their authors had other concerns than quality in mind.

What moved me in Elena’s work is that she seems to be drawned to these places. She says, at several occasions, that during the day, the silence is deafening and that it’s like entering a painting, especially in ghosts villages. Nights seem more lively.

Comment from Elena:

Why trees so often grow on doorsteps?

Maybe it is their way of telling us that we have lost all privileges and are not welcome here any more.

Source here.

She noticed also a message from Nature; “we don’t need you”. I guess it’s what moved me. Human being is cut from nature and all other kind of lives. We are cut from ourselves. And until we don’t remember who we truely are, yes, Nature doesn’t need us.