My fascination with the Chernobyl disaster goes back to my childhood. I was only three years old when the accident happened, but it is an event we discussed for a long time in my family. Why? I’ll probably never know. I think the power of nuclear energy has always fascinated me.
In November 2012 I traveled into the heart of the exclusion area. I decided to bring with me two Polaroid cartridges. I wanted to contrast the immobility of the zone with this medium that symbolizes ephemerality, the past grandeur of a model communist city with a superficial Western piece of technology.
I photographed the main monuments of “the zone” with Impossible Project cartridges and a Polaroid Impulse. The cold distorted the images. The results were surreal. A black stain hides Reactor 4 and its sarcophagus. Technical irony or radioactivity? Again, I’ll never know.
Florent Barnade
