story and photographs by Daniel Emmerson

(Have you read Part 1 and Part 2 already?)

By the time I get to the schoolhouse, I can make out Vlad’s voice as he guides the rest of the group through the destruction. There are several floors to explore and I tread carefully over the rubble and smashed up remnants of furniture in order to rejoin the party. From there we move on to a swimming pool, which I had already seen in a couple of pictures online. The paint peeling off the walls. The giant clock near the shallow end of the pool. The moss and small weeds growing through cracks in the tiles. I wonder how long it will be before these buildings fall to pieces. Vlad refers to Pripyat as a paradise for photographs as he puffs on his cigarette. Indeed, everybody has a camera with them and it seems difficult to imagine some of the objects that we find laying around not to have been positioned strategically for photographs. Random gasmasks, children’s books and part of a broken globe lay distributed on a selection of surfaces, making for excellent photo opportunities.

 

 

It is as though we are walking through a living museum, an encapsulated 3 dimensional archive of abandoned property and paraphernalia intertwined in a pulverised panoply of Soviet architecture. The fact that this area was occupied for less time than it has been abandoned, takes the whole experience to a new and fascinating plateaux of exploration. With birds, bears and other wild beasts being able to sustain the cycle of nature otherwise retarded in parts of the world that have become increasingly populated by humans, this concrete desert, this mangled detritus makes for a brand new insight as to what the world might look like if we human beings decided to pick up and leave.

 

We exit the school and traipse through several crèches, cloakrooms and classrooms, negotiating pitch-black corridors and dilapidated doorframes before reaching one of the most frequently documented areas of the city. The abandoned fairground in the centre of Pripyat hosts little else other than a small dodgem car area and the famous ferris wheel. The bright yellow paint of the compartments sparkles in the sunlight below the smashed wooden decking at the very base of ride.

The second swimming pool we visit is a lot bigger than the first, it is located in a larger complex that was also fitted with a basketball court. The walls are tarnished with a soil coloured cement and the hoops are missing from the backboards. I decide to split from the group once again and climb several flights of stairs where I find another box of gasmasks and a small series of rooms intertwined with cubbyholes. The damp air is ripe with asbestos, making it difficult to breath as I stagger about taking pictures. Vlad bellows from the ground floor that we have only a few minutes left and I work my way back down the skeleton stairwell, catching Johan’s eye for the first time since alighting the bus. There is little left to do but follow the group to yet another building that is filled with photographic delights, including a run down theatre and a dismantled gallery filled with painted portraits of great Soviet leaders.

 

The tour promised a complementary lunch at Cafeteria Number 19, which I am thoroughly looking forward to. What I didn’t realise is that the dining hall is located opposite the power plant, but for some reason this does not bother me. Johan and I begin to discuss what we had just seen. As the coach passes by Reactor Number 4 and approaches the dining hall we have the inevitable discussion as to the feasibility of nuclear power and whether or not this is the way that was should proceed. Nuclear energy is the only way we can go, isn’t it? I suppose that depends who you ask, sure I have read Lovelock and appreciate what the man has to say, but whether one can come to a conclusion based on his argument, I am not sure. I do however recall that Lovelock predicts that most of Europe will be Sub-Saharan by 2040 and that natural resources will remain so very low that we will have to rely on nuclear power to support a specific ecosystem that grants living conditions in very small corners of the world.

 

Our conversation continues after we are served dishes of chicken, cabbage and potatoes. The dinner ladies are most jolly in serving extra coffee and pastries as Johan and I move from the subject of nuclear energy to the nicotine infused pouches he places under his lip instead of smoking cigarettes. He offers me one and I suck at it awkwardly while trying to drink my coffee. Our conversation is interrupted by the man in charge of the trip who tells me his chip and pin reader now has a signal, I pay the $150. After stepping foot outside of the cafeteria, it is almost as though I had forgotten where I was. The coach brings the group to a statue depicting a large stone hand, the fingers pointing heavenwards, with a power plant emerging from the palm. Reactor Number 4 and the sarcophagus that supports it stand a couple of hundred meters in front of us. The Geiger counters go berserk.

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Daniel Emmerson is currently finishing his master thesis, ‘On the Depoliticisation of Confucianism in Chinese Politics’ and is about to start his fifth summer managing the film and photography academy at Millfield in England. He is a regular contributor to High Contrast Review both online and in print. For more of his work, investigate www.danielemmerson.com.