Certificate No. 000358/

<i>The human cost of nuclear catastrophe</i>

<p>

<a

href="http://zreportage.com/Meltdown/Meltdown_Results1.shtml">Photographs

</a>by <a

href="http://www.zreportage.com/WEARE/RobertKnothBIO.shtml">Robert

Knoth</a>.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.zreportage.com/meltdown/meltdown.doc">Stories

</a>by Antoinette de Jong.</p>

 

<p>

For more than twenty years Chernobyl remains a synonym of the greatest

contemporary danger. Scientists are trying to solve very complicated

medical and ecological problems that faced the world after April 26,

1986. At the same time the world community not only is interested to

know how many victims there were, or were there any mutations

possible, or will the sarcophagus endure. There exist many, not less

important issues although they are less articulated. The matter

concerns social and psychological aspects and identity issues for

those who had to stand the Chernobyl tragedy. The exhibition

Certificate No.000358. is dedicated to such a social and cultural

understanding of an ecological disaster.</p>

 

<p>

The exhibition consists of photos made by Robert Knoth(who this year

has obtained an honorary distinction on the World Press Photo �06

contest in the category "Portrait") and stories, narrated by

Antoinette de Jong. By means of word and photo they try to explain

that �Chernobyl� has become synonymous for a contemporary person a

painful problem. Not only for those who found themselves in the

epicenter of event (e.g. Ukrainian residents) but for everyone who has

to live nowadays. That�s why on the photos we can see not only

Chernobyl but Kazakhstan, Belarus, Ural and Siberia. The exhibition is

a complex view on the contemporary human being, remaining unprotected

and facing global ecological changes. It is an attempt to explain that

�Ecological disaster� � is not a local event happened in the past,

that we can either remember or forget, but a situation relating to

every modern human being.</p>

 

<p>

The images Robert Knoth took for the book Certificate No. 000358/ will

be on exhibtion <a

href="http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/chernobyl-deaths-180406/chernobyl-photo-exhibition-sch">worldwide</a>.</p>

Yeeeow. Thanks for the post...

Thanks, very impressive!

While surfing, I also found this <a href="http://www.journalofaphotographer.com/magnum_photos/new_magnum_photos_multimedia_essay_chernobyl_legacy_by_paul_fusco.php">Magnum Photos Multimedia Essay: Chernobyl Legacy by Paul Fusco</a>.

And a photo-essay from a young lady on a motorbike....

 

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/

Chernobyl Legacy by Paul Fusco direct link: <a href="http://www.magnuminmotion.com/essay_chernobyl/">http://www.magnuminmotion.com/essay_chernobyl/</a>

I believe the essay by the lady on the motorbike has been claimed to be fake or staged

You believe that to have been claimed? By whom and with what grounds? Were the photos of a fake Chernobyl or did someone else take them ?

 

I really don't know, so enlighten me please. Her site is very famous so I guess (like anything well known or famous) there is bound to be a bunch of people claiming fakery.

 

I assume there is some substantive, authoritative grounds for accusing the young lady of faking her photos, not just hearsay I hope.

About the Chernobyl facility today (as you read this):

 

The concrete shell was poured by volunteer soldiers racing across the shell with wheelbarrows in relay team, wearing lead vests that did nothing to protect them from the radiation spiking up from below them, into their feet, legs and vital organs.

 

After this abysmal effort to contain the radiation, they were paid a small fee and discharged from the military. Most of them died, coughing up their livers and entrails (sorry but true) after 2 to 4 weeks of agony.

 

Today the shell is compromised. Rain leaks in from above, small animals enter and leave at the base. Scientists who actually understand this situation are very concerned about what's going on with radiation by-products contained within the residue inside the shell.

 

A massive, US $ billion-dollar project has been proposed to build a weather shelter that will be rolled over the existing, failed shell to at least keep the weather out. They aren't saying who or how they will survey, excavate and build the reinforced railway upon which the structure will be rolled into place. Radiation along both sides of the shell is still at unsafe levels.

 

Any volunteers?

 

A major embarassment to the Russian bureaucracy, which desparately tried to keep this quiet.

 

They have Chernobyl. We have Katrina. Both a shame and an embarassment for our leadership.

 

Bob in Seattle

 

Today

Wikipedia has <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Filatova">a pretty good overview of the Kidd of Speed story</a>, including links to the claims that it is at least partly fictionalized.

I looked at those links, but saw nothing much more than assumptions based on little more than absence of evidence rather than any actual evidence of her absence. However, despite the claims, I enjoyed her 'essay' and she tells a story well even IF parts of it are staged or may have been taken by others. We often hear about photographic 'greats' who were found to have staged some shots or 'massaged' the truth.

thanks Hugo and Trevor.

 

Not many photographs have evoked tears in 2 seconds, but one of hers did: the one with the gas mask on the window ledge of the kindergareden did just that.

 

As an Industrial Loss Prevention engineer, the whole Chernobyl monster is a nightmare for me, as it shows me everything we preach in our preofession has a real basis and does in fact deal with life and death matters.

 

The whole mess was a "predictable outcome of known deficiencies", to quote the opening line of the report of the commission of inquiry at Three Mile Island.

 

I love her quote: "The roads are blocked for cars, but not for motorcycles. Good girls go to heaven. Bad ones go to hell. And girls on fast bikes go anywhere they want."

 

Great stuff.

 

Thanks again

She pretty much admits to making stuff up on an old version of her site:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20040516051849/http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/

 

'I am being accused that it was more poetry in this story then reality. I partly accept this accusation, it still was more reality then poetry'

 

The current version of the essay is variously called a 'tale' or 'story' on her new website. I don't know what the real details are, but it seems rather likely she took a standard tour, shot some (genuine!) pictures, and came up with the 'biking through the ghost town' stuff as an attractive framing device.