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The Sarcophagus’s Labyrinth: Photographing the unseen parts of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant  

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It’s been nearly 10 years since I first visited the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It was a great experience for me. I could finally see the place I’d previously only known from books and TV and the tart taste of the Lugol’s iodine I had to drink a few days after the disaster. After many visits to the plant, I was finally even allowed to enter the damaged Reactor 4 and see the notorious control room. It was here that the failed experiment resulting in the reactor exploding and the uncontrolled emission into the atmosphere of terabecquerels of radioactive isotopes was conducted. A decade ago, obtaining the necessary permits to see the epicenter of the events of April 1986 was extremely arduous and complicated. Today, this place is a must-see on most tourist excursions.

Today I return once again to the plant. This time, I want to see new places that I haven’t yet photographed. When I got permission after several months of efforts, sending letters and making phone calls, I was very excited. As one of the staff members in charge of my visit said, I had been granted exclusive access to the nuclear power plant. I can’t wait to find out what this actually means. So, I will be spending the next two days taking photos that I hope to use in the next HALF-LIFE album. It probably won’t be done any time soon, so in the meantime I’ll share with you my thoughts about my visit to the power plant and tell you what it was like to photograph it. But, who knows, maybe 10 years from now, you’ll be able to see these places with your own eyes.

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Meet the USAAC Navigator who possesses the only photographs of the Hiroshima atomic explosion

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The atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th & 9th in 1945 remain the only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in mankind’s history. Six days later, Japan announced its surrender to the allies, effectively ending World War II. This event has seen much debate over the years, and likely will continue to do so throughout the future.

One of the people involved with the bombings was 2nd Lt. aircraft navigator Russel Gackenbach. Now 93, he flew into the heart of Japan on August 6th, as “Little Boy“, the 9,700lb (4,400kg) uranium-235 atomic bomb was dropped onto Hiroshima. While chaos ensued all around, Gackenbach managed to fire off some photographs of the detonation on his personal camera, which he’d taken on the flight with him.

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Unseen (and unauthorised) photos from the ghost towns of Fukushima

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The Fukushima disaster was one of the biggest and most terrible man-made catastrophes of all time. In the course of several days on march 2011 a nuclear power plant near Fukushima went from being a welcomed power source to hell on earth. The place was evacuated and access has been denied.

Some photographers go through excruciating process to get the necessary permits, but this story is about Keow Wee Loong, Malaysian photographer, who is oblivious to man made boundaries (see his volcano and scaling the Finance Centre in Shenzhen photos). Keow Wee Loong entered Fukushima and documented how lives were abruptly stopped there.

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Animated photos from Fukushima show how abrupt its evacuation was after nuclear disaster

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Looking at Fukushima not easy. The place has been evacuated on 2011 after 4 of its nuclear reactors melted down.  Tohuku earthquake raised a 13 tsunami meter wave that was just 3 meters too high for the 10 meter wave gate that the power station had in place. The meltdown reached a level 7 on the International nuclear event scale, which has only been matched by the Chernobyl accident, and never repeated since Fukushima.

Photographer Rebecca Lilith Bathory traveled there and came back with unsettling photos that were animated by designer Chris Lavelle.

While the photos are extremely beautiful, they also put the viewer at extreme unease. Rebecca told DIYP about the motivation for the trip:

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These photos of nuclear explosions were taken one ten-millionth of a second after detonation

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If taking photos of speeding bullets is hard, imagine how hard it is to take photos of a nuclear bomb going off. (I mean aside the obvious issue of having yourself and the camera being completely decimated if you were at any reasonable distance).

I mean, if you developed a nuclear bomb, you wanna see how it works, right? Well the fire call created by the explosion was created so fast and expanded so rapidly that it was virtually impossible to capture. That is until professor Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton of MIT invented the Rapatronic Camera.

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