The first pictures on display at the Willy Brandt Haus are of liquidators, to whom Rüdiger Lubricht dedicates his exhibition Chernobyl, Lost Places / Shattered Biographies: 19 color portraits accompanied by their respective stories.

Approximately 800,000 liquidators, for the most part firemen, policemen or soldiers, risked their lives while helping to control the damage from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor during the meltdown of 1986 and the subsequent years of cleaning and controlling further disaster. Several have since perished, others are still fighting illnesses that developed from the high exposure to radioactivity. In the form of a story told with images and text, this is not just a display of personal biographies, but also, and foremost, a personalized summary of what the catastrophe meant and still means for survivors and direct witnesses.

The exhibition continues on the second floor with photos taken in the city of Pripjet, a modern-day ghost city where time stopped. A large carnival Ferris wheel surrounded by trees; the inside of a nursery school with toys scattered everywhere; an empty pool or a restaurant: everything evokes the people that were once here and who, in three day’s time, had to leave everything behind. There are also pictures of people returning to their villages after the evacuation, despite the danger: for the most part older people still living in their homes (like the two sisters born in the 1920’s), and who, with their presence, seem to repute radiation’s devastating effects.

Other pictures map out the forbidden zone or even deadly zone, where Pripjet was located, an abandoned 10 km² perimeter around the reactor: beautiful landscapes, old ruined houses and other signs of normal life eclipsed by the absence of inhabitants.

Since 2003, Rüdiger Lubricht has been working on Chernobyl and has traveled 16 times to the Ukraine and Belarus.

A catalog was published for this exhibition with the German title: Verlorene Orte | Gebrochene Biografien, Fotografien von Rüdiger Lubricht – IBB Dortmund Verlag, €25.

Sebastián Messina

Rüdiger Lubricht. Chernobyl – Lost Places / Shattered Biographies

Through May 29
Willy-Brandt-Haus
Stressemannstr. 28
10963 Berlin