Camera Work Gallery Kantstraße 149 10623 Berlin Allemagne
Fifteen years after the disastrous meltdown in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Robert Polidori approached the place of horror with his large format camera in a quite objective and detached way in 2001. Polidori was one of the few chosen people who were even granted access to the control room of the exploded block IV. The photographer was allowed to enter the life-threatening room with a safety-suit and a gas mask on for only five minutes. Polidori offers the observer a dreadful view at a place, which today even seems extraterrestrial and where a fatal chain of human mistakes led to an incomparable catastrophe. Polidori’s photographs which were taken in the industrial city of Pripjat, impressively document that the inhabitants had to leave their lives behind immediately. Various lootings in the hazardous restricted area have now destroyed the original image, but the photographer was nonetheless able to find traces of social life. The crimson blackboard in a classroom, still bearing writing on it, gas masks ominously scattered on the ground, or the remains of an operating room are all ubiquitous evidence that gives the viewer an impression of the panic-stricken scenes which must have occurred at the time.