22 3 August 2019 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113

I

n 1984, anxiety over

nuclear war was at its peak.

American President Ronald

Reagan’s Strategic Defence

Initiative (Star Wars), intended to

protect the USA from attack by

ballistic strategic nuclear weapons,

was in development. The landmark

TV film Threads, about the effects of

a nuclear holocaust on Sheffield and

eventual long-term effects of nuclear

war on civilisation, disturbed the

nation. The British New Wave band,

Ultravox, released Dancing With

Tears In My Eyes. The music video

depicts band frontman Midge Ure

driving home after discovering that

a nuclear explosion is imminent.

The video ends with the power plant

exploding. I was 12 and terrified.

And then it happened. At

1:23:58am (Moscow time) on 26

April 1986, a catastrophic nuclear

accident occurred at the No 4

nuclear reactor in the Chernobyl

Nuclear Power Plant, near the city

of Pripyat in northern Ukraine.

The reactor exploded and burned,

spewing radioactive material. It

was the worst nuclear accident in

history. My family and I would

gather around the TV to watch the

news and reports of the radioactive

cloud. I would sit at the front so no

one would see the tears in my eyes.

The first photograph to be taken

of the reactor 14 hours after the

explosion is credited to Igor Kostin.

Shot from the first helicopter to fly

over the disaster zone to evaluate

radiation levels, the view is fuzzy

owing to the radiation. Radiation

experts later learnt that at 200

metres above the reactor, levels

reached 1500 rems (a measurement

of the biological effect of absorbed

radiation), despite the fact that their

counters did not exceed 500 rems.

Working for the Novosti Press

Agency, Kostin was one of only a

handful of photographers in the

world to take pictures of the

Chernobyl nuclear disaster (he died

in a car crash in 2015 aged 78). In

subsequent years there would be

many more. The area has an

undeniable lure.

In 2002, a week before my

wedding, I was on assignment for

Me n’s Health magazine in Minsk,

The recent TV series conveyed the full horror of

Chernobyl. Peter Dench investigates the area’s

continuing appeal to photographers, 33 years on

Above: A statue of

Lenin on a former

collective farm in

south Belarus.

May 2002

CHERNOBYL OVER THE YEARS

fallout

Documenting

the

© PETER DENCH