A photography trip to Chernobyl

Travel diary: Photography trip exploring Pripyat & Chernobyl exclusion zone

Back in October I went on a trip to Ukraine with my other half and a group of photography friends with the main intention of heading to Chernobyl, but we had a few extra days in Kiev to explore as well. I took a LOT of photos so I think for the purpose of this not being an incredibly long post I’ll share the photos of Kiev in a separate post, but today we’re going to focus on Pripyat and the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

Before we headed to Ukraine we booked a private tour online (I saw we, Arran did most of the organising, it’s definitely important to do it before you go as they need copies of your passport info before hand to register you). You can join other tours but because there was 7 of us and we were primarily all photographers/videographers we booked a private tour as we knew there were certain places we wanted to explore with more time for photography. Again I would definitely recommend this if you’re in a small group and know what you want to see.

So the tour itself… We were picked up at our Air bnb near the centre of Kiev at 8AM In a super nice air conditioned bus. Where we watched a short film about what happened in Chernobyl before stopping off at a petrol station for coffee & snacks (I’m not sure if this bit is standard or just because our tour guide was super lovely and could sense we needed coffee and food!) Speaking of which, our tour guide Sasha was incredible! On our way there he asked us if there was anything in particular we wanted to see, we explained we were photographers and he planned us a route that meant we saw virtually no other visitors, opting to head to Pripyat in the afternoon as most people head their first! Just as we began to drive into Chernobyl WE SAW 2 WOLVES CHASE A DEER!! Both Sasha and the driver said they’d never seen wolves in daylight, so we were all pretty chuffed and thought if we didn’t see anything else interesting then atleast we saw some wolves (spoiler, we definitely saw a lot of interesting things though!) Throughout the route there are various checkpoints to stop at where guards check your passport info, and a few where you have to step through radiation detecting machines, this bit was a litttttle intimidating haha! Thankfully we all made it through each bit fine!

Before the trip I’m not 100% sure what my expectations really were, I guess I expected it to be really cold, dreary, grey and a bit bleak… Whilst in reality, yes it was pretty cold, but it was incredibly sunny and bright, literally the perfect autumnal day. It kinda created a very strange juxtaposition between what you were seeing, and how you were seeing it. At times, I definitely forgot where I was… But you were swiftly brought back to it with the sight of gas masks and peeling wallpaper. To use the common phrase “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” I decided that trying to take dark, moody, emotive photos (which I thought would be how I should embrace Pripyat) just wasn’t my style, and in fact I would just embrace my bright. colourful style, after all I had the perfect day for it. This isn’t to say that I didn’t feel emotional when I was there. It was incredibly thought provoking and getting a glimpse into what it was like before, what happened, and how it looks now really hits you. But I wanted to embrace the beauty of nature, sort of reclaiming what is there. Create a kind of dream like feel at times, I certainly felt that with the amusement park with the lens flare and light hitting the trees, but still show the destruction that was caused.

If you’re thinking of heading to Chernobyl at some point then I would highly recommend it! Here’s just a small-ish selection of the photos I took!