Inside Chornobyl — 2009
A five-part field recording from inside the Exclusion Zone
In 2009, I entered the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone with a camera and no clear intention beyond documenting what remained.
This footage was not created as a film, nor shaped into a narrative. It is a direct record — a series of observations captured as they unfolded, without staging or interference.
Moving through checkpoints, abandoned interiors, and the silent streets of Pripyat, the experience revealed itself slowly. The absence of people, the weight of time, and the persistence of small details began to define the journey.
These five recordings form a continuous passage through the Zone as it existed then — quieter, less mediated, and before the widespread attention that would later follow.
What remains here is not interpretation, but presence.
Filmed on location in 2009.
Part I: Entering the Zone
The journey begins moving through Chornobyl town, passing quietly through a place that continues to exist within the boundaries of the Zone.
The road toward the power plant unfolds without interruption — ordinary structures, scattered signs of life, and the first subtle shifts in atmosphere. It is here that the transition begins, not at a single point of entry, but gradually, as the environment becomes more distant and the presence of the outside world starts to fall away.
Part II: Pripyat
Pripyat reveals itself through its interiors. Moving through the hospital, the café, the police station, and the abandoned Azure swimming pool, the structures remain standing, but their interiors have been stripped, looted, and left to decay.
Surfaces collapse, details disappear, and what once defined these spaces is reduced to fragments. The city holds its outline, but its substance is steadily eroding.
Part III: Interiors and Remnants
The exploration moves deeper into Pripyat’s interior spaces. Classrooms and corridors, a kindergarten scattered with remnants of childhood, and apartment buildings left open to time.
Personal traces remain in fragments — objects displaced, rooms exposed, and the quiet persistence of what was once ordinary life.
Moving between streets and structures, the boundary between public and private space begins to dissolve.
Part IV: Aftermath and Absence
The exploration moves deeper into Pripyat’s interior spaces. Classrooms and corridors, a kindergarten scattered with remnants of childhood, and apartment buildings left open to time.
Personal traces remain in fragments — objects displaced, rooms exposed, and the quiet persistence of what was once ordinary life.
Moving between streets and structures, the boundary between public and private space begins to dissolve.
Part V: The Outer Zone
The final movement shifts beyond Pripyat, into the outer villages of the Zone. Abandoned houses collapse into the landscape as vegetation overtakes structures and the boundary between built and natural space begins to fade.
The journey concludes in Chornobyl town, at the ship graveyard — vessels left behind, corroding and exposed to the same passage of time. What remains is a landscape in transition, where absence is absorbed into the environment.
This series documents a passage through the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone as it existed in 2009 — a period before widespread tourism and increased global attention reshaped access and perception.
The footage remains unedited and observational, preserving the pace and atmosphere of the experience as it unfolded.
Alongside this work, a photographic body of images from the same journey explores the Zone through still frames, focusing on structure, detail, and the passage of time.