We're Open For Business!

The show is up at Bezpala Brown Gallery and it looks amazing! 7 hours of hanging photos yesterday and we're ready for our first visitors starting today at noon! Some teaser snapshots from the very long day of hanging photos:

The Independent Women in their rusted iron frames

The big reactor in all its toxic glory - 4' x 4', not easy to hang this one

Playing around with some plexiglass mounting

The vastness of a ghost city

If you ever get a chance to visit Pripyat, thinking to yourself "I have 3 days - I'm going to photograph the entire place!" believe me when I say, you never will. The city is so huge and you want to have at least an hour per building to shoot something half decent. I think I would need at least 3 more visits to get a comprehensive photographic essay of this forgotten location.

Click the map to enlarge it (you'll need to - trust me). You'll see just how little we shot in 3 days on a private tour....

Where did the time go?

It's amazing how fast time flies. In just 3 days we'll be installing the CONTACT Photography Show at Bezpala Brown Gallery that has come out of this 2 year adventure!

Just in case you were interested in seeing just how big the locations were that we visited, here's a map of the Chornobyl reactor and area - anything with labels indicating where we were allowed to go and to shoot.

Remembering Vladimir Shevchenko

Russian filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko went into the irradiated zone and was allowed complete access to film the workers as they attempted to clean up the destruction left by the explosion.

Wearing only a surgical mask - the same as most of the workers at the disaster - at one point he filmed the crash of an army helicopter while filming from the roof of the reactor, subjecting himself to lethal doses of radiation.

Shevchenko later compiled his footage into a film entitled "Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks" which was immediately suppressed by the Soviet government. He later died from the radiation he exposed himself to, although he is not among the official casualties of the accident.

These scenes were not included in the final cut of the film and you can see Shevchenko in one of them on the roof of the reactor with his camera gear:

Chernobyl Disaster Documentary

If you have an hour, sit down and watch this amazing documentary about the Chornobyl disaster - with interviews with Hans Blix, Gorbachev, government and military workers, journalists, scientists, and Prypyat refugees.

We watched this documentary on the train out of Kyiv, heading out to Odessa to do some sightseeing after our big adventure to Chornobyl. It made me realize just what I had been walking through, what I had witnessed 23 years later, that I was now a part of nuclear experience in the Exclusion Zone. I don't think I will ever forget my time there or what I witnessed.

To this day, the term "The Liquidators" is one that I will always associate with radiation and death - even though these approximately 800000 young men were heros for going in without true knowledge of what they were getting into. The most heroic to me are the team of coal miners, who used their expertise to pump out the contaminated water to prevent its entrance into the groundwater. Although they were given suits and masks to wear, it was so dark and hot under the reactor, most chose to go in unencumbered by these ineffective security measures in order to work faster and breathe properly. They truly had no idea what working so long with so little protection under the reactor would do to them.

Inside a Crumbling Nuclear Giant

The sarcophagus that entombs the remains of the Chornobyl reactor was built hastily back in 1986 after the explosion. It was a quick solution to an unprecedented life-threatening problem that could cross through Europe and into Asia, depending on how the wind blew. Plans have been underway to design and build a new, more permanent sarcophagus before higher levels of radiation leak out and threaten the workers, animals, land, and water. This Greenpeace video, shows the interior of the crumbling structure and daily maintenance required to keep it standing until the new solution is completed.

Our exhibit in Slate Art Magazine

Two Canadian artists document Chernobyl 25 years after the nuclear disaster while the world watches another unfold. Volatile Particles contrasts man's impact on the environment with nature's resilience. The photographs blend images of normality (the ghosts of the past) superimposed on post-Chernobyl devastation and infestation (the present-day stark reality amid the afterlife of the Exclusion Zone). Poignant, moving and relevant – this is a timely introspection addressing our ever-evolving nuclear depression.