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museoffire's review
5.0
Part chronicle of one of the single greatest disasters in world history and part meditation on the power of nature this is one that will take up permanent residence in your brain and return to you at odd moments. I keep seeing images from the frozen city of Pripyat everywhere from the grocery store to the playground at my sons' school. I find myself looking for fading ruins when I'm walking through the woods or imagining what my own house might look like twenty years from now if I were to just leave everything just as it is and walk away.
It feels weird to call this book beautiful but its undeniable that these images captured at various points in time over twenty-five years by the brilliant photographer David McMillan are just that. There's something strangely hopeful in the way nature is winning in its reclamation war against the ruin of nuclear disaster. Though its impossible to describe the empty kindergaarten classrooms and deserted parks as anything less then haunting. The colors of the toys left on shelves and a sweater still hanging over a chair as still strangely bright and eye catching as though their owners have just stepped out for a cup of coffee. You keep expecting to see people or at least signs of some kind of human life but it never appears.
Beautiful and devastating and very worth a look.
*I have NO idea why "spoiler alert" shows up at the beginning of this review. I think we're all aware of the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred over thirty years ago so what Goodreads thinks I'm spoiling is beyond me.
It feels weird to call this book beautiful but its undeniable that these images captured at various points in time over twenty-five years by the brilliant photographer David McMillan are just that. There's something strangely hopeful in the way nature is winning in its reclamation war against the ruin of nuclear disaster. Though its impossible to describe the empty kindergaarten classrooms and deserted parks as anything less then haunting. The colors of the toys left on shelves and a sweater still hanging over a chair as still strangely bright and eye catching as though their owners have just stepped out for a cup of coffee. You keep expecting to see people or at least signs of some kind of human life but it never appears.
Beautiful and devastating and very worth a look.
*I have NO idea why "spoiler alert" shows up at the beginning of this review. I think we're all aware of the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred over thirty years ago so what Goodreads thinks I'm spoiling is beyond me.
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