Harvard marks anniversary with presentation of photographs (05/14/06)

THE 20th ANNIVERSARY OF THE CHORNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER

Harvard marks anniversary with presentation of photographs

by Peter T. Woloschuk
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - "Perhaps the one good thing that came out of Chornobyl was that it hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union," photographer Yuriy Kosin said as he tried to contextualize the effect of the Chornobyl nuclear accident and its aftermath on Ukraine, Belarus and all of Eastern Europe. "Even [Leonid] Brezhnev admitted as much in his memoirs."

Mr. Kosin's remarks came at a special presentation of his photographs taken over the past 20 years in the area of Chornobyl, Slavutych and the surrounding forbidden zone. The presentation was co-sponsored by the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) and Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

The presentation was titled "Through the Lens of a Camera - Chornobyl Revisited" and consisted of three parts: a presentation of photographs of the Chornobyl region with commentary and PowerPoint, a question-and-answer session, and a presentation of other photographs of Ukraine.

At the time of the disaster, Mr. Kosin was employed as a nuclear engineer at Chornobyl and he was pressed into service as a "liquidator" to help clean up the area immediately after the nuclear emissions. By his own admission, he was immediately struck by the incongruity of the Soviet propaganda banners and posters extolling communism and its "peaceful use of the atom" for the benefit of the Soviet people and all mankind, and began to work with the special brigades to take some of them down.

Although officially forbidden to take photographs or make notes of the reality of the zone, Mr. Kosin felt it was necessary to do so and began to smuggle his camera with him on a daily basis in his gas mask case.

The resulting photographs show the immediate devastation of the area, the reactor from the air as it is being encased in cement, abandoned schools and classrooms, baby carriages in the street, clothing everywhere, the abandoned city of Prypiat, and the clay pits where contaminated articles were buried. The dying and dead trees stand in stark contrast to the lowering clouds and the sense of brooding and despair that haunts these pictures. One tree seems to form a badly deformed tryzub and looms in front of the power station complex. Mr. Kosin's use of both black and white film and sepia tones intensifies the feeling of the tragedy.

After the major clean-up was completed Mr. Kosin was able to continue to have access to the area by becoming a part of a friend's film crew that was officially sanctioned to produce a documentary of the aftermath of the disaster and its impact on the region. As a result, Mr. Kosin's photos cover the entire span of the last 20 years, and he was able to show the genetic changes that have occurred in the area, including a photo of some very beautiful flowers with leaves where their stamens should have been.

He also chronicled the gradual attempts by nature to reclaim the area and the residents who have come home in spite of government prohibitions, fences and patrols. There are now so many of them that the government has begun providing them with some basic services in spite of its desire to keep them away. There has even been a live birth recorded in the past six months. One picture showed an old woman standing by her home and how she had safeguarded it against marauding bandits, a few showed the older residents working their patches of land, one showed a worker in a particularly contaminated area wearing a gas mask while fishing in a small pond, and a particularly poignant still showed the x-ray of a pregnant woman carrying a female fetus which was clearly missing its lower appendages.

Mr. Kosin talked about the problems in the zone, particularly with organized bands of outlaws and looters, and pointed to the fact that the first things looted throughout the region were the icons, which were taken both from private homes and abandoned churches.

At the end of the question-and-answer period, Mr. Kosin showed some of his other photographs taken all over the country and discussed his attempts to capture the human face of Ukraine with his camera.

Although Mr. Kosin is fluent in Ukrainian, for some inexplicable reason he gave his entire presentation in Russian, which was then simultaneously translated into English by a translator provided by the university. As Mr. Kosin warmed to his topic and the flood of memories and anecdotes flowed out, the translator was overwhelmed and simply became part of the wider audience.

Mr. Kosin was born in Kompaniyivka in the Kirovohrad Oblast of Ukraine in 1948. He graduated from the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in 1974 and from the Kyiv Institute of Journalism in 1988. In 1992 he began to organize the Independent Academy of Photographic Craftsmanship.

Over the years Mr. Kosin has participated in more than 40 joint photographic exhibits in Ukraine, Russia, the United States, Germany, France, Slovakia and the United Arab Emirates. He has been involved in the presentation of a number of projects including "Ukraine" and "A Revolution that Turned into a Celebration," a photo essay of the Orange Revolution.

Recently Mr. Kosin published a series of photo compositions on Ukraine and Chornobyl titled "Through the Eyes of Ukraine" to critical international acclaim. He also has mounted a photo exhibition at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and he has offered testimony on Chornobyl at a congressional hearing.

As an additional commemoration of the anniversary, HURI Shklar Fellow William Risch assisted Christine Slywotzky and Yaryna Turko Bodrock in planting a tree dedicated to the memory of the victims of Chornobyl on the grounds of the Ukrainian Catholic Parish of Christ the King in Forest Hills, Mass.

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