Shortly after the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 135,000 people were evacuated from an area extending 30 kilometers around the damaged reactor. In 1994, eight years after the accident, I read a magazine article describing the condition of the area, which became known as the exclusion zone. Many of the artifacts of the citizenry were left behind, and thousands of acres of formerly productive farmland were left to lie fallow. My photographic interests had long been in the relationship between nature and culture, so the subject seemed very rich in possibilities. I was intrigued enough to arrange a visit, and in October of 1994, I went to photograph the exclusion zone for the first time. Even though the area was closely guarded, I was permitted to travel and photograph freely. I recognized that the subject was large and complex, offering me the opportunity of making photographs that couldn’t be made anywhere else. These photographs are the result of eleven visits.  

I soon realized that the city of Pripyat, where the employees of the nuclear power plant and their families once lived, was where my real interests lay. The Atomic City, as it was once known, was considered one of the finest places to live in the former Soviet Union. The first apartments were built in the mid-seventies, when the power plant was under construction, and at the time of the accident, it was home to 45,000 people. There were all the amenities of a modern Soviet city, with many schools, stores, hospitals, and recreational and cultural facilities. It is now uninhabitable and will never be lived in again.

Although the geographical location for my work has become circumscribed, it has opened up new avenues to explore. As time has passed, vegetation has proliferated while buildings have deteriorated. This has led to the re-photographing of some sites. In 2004, I began making wide photographs using a conventional camera. (The negatives are scanned and joined digitally. The prints themselves vary in size, up to 75x200 cm.)

The exclusion zone is a remarkable and surprising place, not dead and static, as one would expect, but full of growth and change.

David McMillan