Therese Iknoian: Reclaimed by Time – Abandoned Chornobyl’s Nuclear Legacy

More than 39 years after a nuclear explosion that spewed 400 times more radiation into the atmosphere than Hiroshima, the Chornobyl* nuclear disaster remains the poster child for what can go wrong. 

In January 2020, I spent four days in the “Chornobyl Exclusion Zone,” even staying in a small hotel there. I regarded it as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to capture images of a region abandoned after a nuclear accident on April 26, 1986. Little did I know that a pandemic followed by a war, now in its third year, would prevent me from returning to Ukraine, a country I had come to love but now was fighting for its life.

What made the visit so compelling was witnessing how nature and the elements slowly reclaimed what was once a thriving Chornobyl community. Tens of thousands of residents of the area, including in the main town of Pripyiat*, were quickly evacuated with just a few belongings. They were told they’d return in a few days, so they left everything behind, including their pets. They never returned.

Having the opportunity to spend four days there left time to consider how fragile our world is and to take images that do what I love as a photojournalist – tell a story. I hope you, too, find time to contemplate the apocalyptic combination of civilization and collapse in viewing my photos of what Chornobyl has become.

*Chornobyl and Pripyiat are the Ukrainian spellings of what was called Chernobyl and Pripyat before the war.