An eerie window into Chernobyl’s exclusion zone

One night in 2017, pho­tog­ra­ph­er Pier­pao­lo Mit­ti­ca was walk­ing around the skele­tal remains of Pripy­at, an aban­doned city in north­ern Ukraine’s Cher­nobyl exclu­sion zone. He was with a small group of camo-clothed young men, most­ly aged in their late 20s and ear­ly 30s, and they were keep­ing qui­et to avoid the atten­tion of police and secu­ri­ty. They had spent all day sleep­ing in an apart­ment after trekking around 60 km (37 miles) through the for­est to reach the city, but now that the sun had set, they were mov­ing through its emp­ty build­ings, look­ing through draw­ers and cab­i­nets, pick­ing out pho­tographs, posters, diaries and any oth­er arte­facts that they could find.

Mit­ti­ca was pho­tograph­ing a fac­tion of Ukrain­ian stalk­ers – a niche sub­cul­ture of young Ukraini­ans who would break into the Cher­nobyl exclu­sion zone and explore the area for days at a time. The activity’s roots lie in the release of a 2007 sur­vival-hor­ror video game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., which dropped play­ers into Pripy­at and its sur­round­ing areas as they fight of mutants and radi­a­tion, which inspired young peo­ple to seek the place out in real life.

“They live like they are the last sur­vivors in the world,” Mit­ti­ca explains. ​“They move around dur­ing the night vis­it­ing the most icon­ic places of the city, and they will take stuff like books, posters and so on and put them in dry places to pre­serve them, because they want to pre­serve the mem­o­ry of the city and the mem­o­ry of the acci­dent – it was a very, very incred­i­ble trip.”

Pic­tures that he took on that jour­ney, fea­tur­ing an inti­mate hid­ing spot in a building’s attic along­side art­works that the stalk­ers had cho­sen to pre­serve, now fea­ture in Mittica’s new pho­to­book Cher­nobyl. He first vis­it­ed the for­mer nuclear pow­er plant and its sur­round­ing area over two decades ago, which in 1986 was the site of a major dis­as­ter. An explod­ing reac­tor released mil­lions of radioac­tive par­ti­cles into the sur­round­ing atmos­phere and caused the deaths of more than 30 pow­er plant oper­a­tors and firemen.

Since then, Mit­ti­ca has returned to Cher­nobyl over 20 times, pho­tograph­ing the area’s sur­re­al, eerie ener­gy, and the peo­ple who exist with­in it. While the radioac­tive exclu­sion zone con­jures images of aban­doned land­scapes, devoid of human pres­ence, what Mit­ti­ca found was in fact an area teem­ing with life. “[Peo­ple think] that the exclu­sion zone must be a dead zone, that peo­ple must not be there – but it’s full of life” he says. ​“There are 4,000 peo­ple liv­ing inside the zone, because the zone must be secure – there are mil­i­tary, army per­son­nel, police­men and fire­men who must all take care of the zone, and 2,000 work­ers who take care of the nuclear pow­er plant.”

His pho­to­book is a win­dow into life and soci­ety in the shad­ow of the pow­er plant. ​“They live in Cher­nobyl City in the exclu­sion zone, which is like a nor­mal Ukrain­ian city, because they need facil­i­ties for the work­ers – they have shops, mar­kets restau­rants, bars, a gym, a church, a cul­tur­al cen­tre, and they need work­ers,” he con­tin­ues. ​“It was fas­ci­nat­ing, so I start­ed doc­u­ment­ing this strange place.”

Also liv­ing with­in the exclu­sion zone were the samose­ly (reset­tlers) peo­ple. After the 1986 acci­dent, peo­ple in the sur­round­ing areas were evac­u­at­ed and relo­cat­ed, usu­al­ly to sub­urbs of large cities. A small hand­ful though, reject­ed their new lives and even­tu­al­ly returned to their homes, liv­ing large­ly iso­lat­ed lives despite being pro­hib­it­ed from doing so and risk­ing the haz­ardous health effects of radi­a­tion. Exist­ing along­side them were tourists of dif­fer­ent stripes, from the guid­ed tour day trip­pers to the more adven­tur­ous, below-the-radar stalk­ers, as well as a Hasidic Jew­ish con­tin­gent who would make pil­grim­ages to Cher­nobyl to vis­it the grave of 18^th cen­tu­ry founder of Hasidism Rab­bi Men­achem, Nochum Twersky.

“When I saw them there were hun­dreds of these Jew­ish peo­ple going around the city, it was an incred­i­ble scene to see,” says Mit­ti­ca. ​“The sto­ry is very impor­tant, because with Cher­nobyl, there is not only the peo­ple or nature, but also the his­to­ry of the place. We only remem­ber Cher­nobyl for the acci­dent, but it has a long his­to­ry before that.”

That his­to­ry is now tight­ly sealed though, and quick­ly being for­got­ten. In Feb­ru­ary 2022, when Rus­sia launched a full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine, the area was evac­u­at­ed, includ­ing the remain­ing samose­ly peo­ple for the sec­ond time in their lives. The pow­er plant was occu­pied for just over a month, but even though Russ­ian troops even­tu­al­ly with­drew, the exclu­sion zone was filled with count­less active land­mines. It means that the adven­ture tourism of the stalk­ers, the his­to­ry of the Hasidic Jews and the homes of the peo­ple who lived there, will be inac­ces­si­ble for future generations.

“Cher­nobyl was the biggest tech­no­log­i­cal acci­dent that has hap­pened in the world,” Mit­ti­ca says. ​“Behind the acci­dent is pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, nuclear [sci­ence] that all influ­ence our frag­ile life. Cher­nobyl is a huge world of great human­i­ty that some­one tried to destroy.

“There are peo­ple still fac­ing the con­se­quences.” He con­tin­ues. ​“But this human­i­ty still stands, and I tried to show the face of these human beings.”

Cher­nobyl by Pier­pao­lo Mit­ti­ca is pub­lished by GOST Books

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