Marking 35 years since the Chernobyl disaster, architecture photographer Catalin Marin takes us to the isolated buildings that once saw life. Now abandoned scenes, the juxtaposition of haunting and beautiful comes full circle in his series commemorating the historic event.
Chernobyl: 35 Years Later Through the Lens
April 26th marked 35 years since the tragic Chernobyl accident took place in what was the USSR and now is Ukraine. There are many haunting photographs from this troubled area, but visiting Chernobyl in 2015, I wanted to find my own way of telling the story of this nuclear accident which took place 35 years ago. Since I love photographing architecture and interiors, I decided to photograph the place just like I would any client assignment, paying close attention to lines and architectural and interior details which I felt provided a sharp contrast with the starkness of all these abandoned places.
It’s very moving to hear the stories of the people who lived here during the nuclear accident and who would have been a lot better off if the government would have told them in time to evacuate. The town had available hundreds of gas masks which could have been used to reduce some of the radiation effects, yet they were not used in order to not create panic in the first 24-48 hours. As a kid living in communist Romania at the time, I remember that even the Romanian government was secretive about the whole accident and people were trying to find any kind of information about the radioactive cloud that was moving above Europe.
Catalin Marin is a photographer based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates for the last 15 years. Specializing in architectural, interior and lifestyle photography, you can find his work via his Website and his popular travel photography blog.