Chernobyl Journal #3: Red Forest and Pripyat Center

Saturday, April 25th, 2009 | decay, project wormwood, travel journal, video | 8 Comments

This is part three of my travel photo journal to the Chernobyl zone of exclusion. Check out the Chernobyl Journal page for the full story, all pictures, videos and sounds.

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Before going to the ghost city of Pripyat, our guide had some additional stops planned: Right and left in the empty fields small warning signs appeared, bearing the yellow and red sign of radioactive contamination. We were passing the highly contaminated Red Forest area west of the reactor. In 1986, all the trees were set ablaze by the accident – hence the name, Red Forest – and have later been buried in plastic wrap at special sites to protect the ground water. Once full of trees, Red Forest it is now a brown, bumpy landscape full of uncut grass.

The average radiation level in the field is around 50 uSv/h (300-500 times higher than normal) with pockets of up to 10 000 (50 000 – 100 000 times higher than normal). That’s where we stopped and got out of the car. › Continue reading

Tags: Chernobyl, photography, Pripyat, travel, urbanexploration

Chernobyl Journal #2: The road to Chernobyl

Sunday, April 19th, 2009 | project wormwood, travel journal, video | No Comments

This is part two of my travel photo journal to the Chernobyl zone of exclusion. Check out the Chernobyl Journal page for the full story, all pictures, videos and sounds.

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Our tour to Chernobyl was scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

Entry into the zone of exclusion is only allowed with proper authorizations and a tour guide. I was in contact with our guide Yuriy from the Chernobyl InterInform agency – that’s the official state authority – a couple of weeks before the trip and had arranged a 7:30 pickup from a street close to our apartment. I apparently woke him by a phone call at 7:15. “Yes, I will be there in 20 minutes”, he said, which our Riga colleagues translated as: “I will get out of bed now.” › Continue reading

Tags: Chernobyl, roadtrip, travel

Chernobyl Journal #1: From Basel to Kyiv

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 | project wormwood, travel journal | 2 Comments

Two weeks ago, I returned from my photo trip to Chernobyl and Pripyat. Since then, I have been working on initial versions of the photographs for publishing.

When I put my pictures online, I usually don’t add a lot of text and history to it. In the case of Chernobyl however, having the pictures speak for themselves wouldn’t do the trip nor location justice – there is too much to tell about the history and ambiance; for this reason, I will make the travel stories part of the publishing process.

Over the next couple of posts, I will illustrate the text from my “Chernobyl journal” with pictures, audio and video. So put on some sturdy travel shoes, fire up the Geiger counter, and follow me. › Continue reading

Tags: Chernobyl, journal, Kiev, Kyiv, photographs, photography, Pripyat, Riga, travel, Ukraine, urban