Genavieve Gunson, The Children of Chernobyl (Travel 2018)

My inspiration for these photographs all started with a book on abandoned places around the world. I was turning pages when I stopped at one place in particular. It was the city of Pripyat and the Chernobyl power plant that sparked my interest. I remember doing something on the 1986 nuclear disaster at school, but I was too young to understand the full severity of the situation. The city literally became abandoned over night. On the afternoon of April 27 1986 the residents of Pripyat were told to pack a few things, as there was an accident at the power plant. They were told not to be alarmed and that they would be back in a few days. This was not the case as 50,000 people left and no one came back. I was so intrigued and fascinated by this sudden evacuation that I asked my dad if we could visit the old city. My dad initially thought that you couldn’t visit the area but after some convincing we were finally on a flight to the Ukraine. In and around Pripyat some areas are safe to travel into but others are still highly radioactive. Thanks to the dedicated team of liquidators, firefighters, doctors, factory workers and plant workers it is safe to visit some areas in Chernobyl. On the trip I found out that reactor number five, which was directly next to number four was going to also explode, however countless men offered their lives to stop what could have been a catastrophic disaster for the northern hemisphere. There is no official record of how many people died from the long term affects of radiation, but we need to recognize that a lot of peoples lives were severely affected from one tiny mistake. My images represent the children of Chernobyl and the freedom, happiness and future that they lost that day. “The invisible enemy” can cause so much pain and suffering and that’s why I strongly support and encourage the nuclear power phase-out. Life is precious.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.