13th October 2020
Graham Harries - Chernobyl
Last week we had yet another excellent and enthralling presentation from Graham Harries on visits he has made to the Chernobyl area. Graham is a diverse photographer - photographing weddings, bands, portrait and travel. I like that because I sometimes wonder whether I should have a favourite speciality - I know it's not important really and it's nice to have it confirmed! Graham has also become interested in derelict buildings in his own locality and showed us some recent work, which led us nicely into the main event - Chernobyl.
It was a captivating session showing us 2 seasons of Pripyat (the city which had housed the Chernobyl workers who lived there until evacuation) and Slavutych (where the people were re housed following the disaster). Pripyat is now desolate and abandoned and was the main location for Graham's images.
Pripyat was a very stern place - the usual utilitarian architecture expected in Soviet cities with the odd break in the dismal landscape of a surprising sculpture or some painting providing an unexpected colour in the otherwise grey vistas. The city had housed 49,000 people - all of whom had 3 hours to evacuate and take anything they could once the disaster in Chernobyl had occured! Unimaginable - I don’t even know how to think what that might feel like as an individual.
Amongst many images Graham showed us a Soviet military gym and a very impressive display of old photographs of Russian composers. He likes to find the images which no one else has either noticed or bothered to take. Instagram is full of cliched images of this locality (and indeed those have to be taken as well!) but, spending longer in these localities and employing some ingenuity Graham was able to photograph some unusual and unique aspects. I was surprised though how - with the influx of tourists to the site - some parts of the site have been “staged” for tourist photos - I don’t know why that surprised me but it did.
Another of his images was of signposts of the lost villages -I had no idea there were so many villages which had been affected. A powerful image, with a very powerful story.
In another he showed a dining room and shop which are in Slavutych - I found those a bit surreal but equally as sad as the Pripyat ones!
Through his images he introduced us to two characters - Maria a re-settler and Sergei a guard - this placed a welcome human perspective into his presentation. His story telling also brought the images alive - I said in my thanks to him on Tuesday that it must be the Celt in him, he most certainly is a fabulous story teller.
Recent fires in 2020 destroyed lots of little Dacha cabins - this reinforces the importance of documentary photography. The historical importance of Graham's portfolio must be enormous and some of the images he showed us no longer exist in real life now.
There is something poetic about past abandoned lives but Graham did not glamourise the images leaving them to tell their own stories. Watching the presentation made me reflect once again upon how expendable our lives are and how normality as we know it can change in matters of hours. Also human beings have such a propensity to destroy yet at the same time there is always within us hopefulness of recovery. These thoughts I had in relation to Graham's presentation, but it is not difficult at all to apply the same thoughts (even though the tragedies are different and not really comparable) to a pandemic world.
Graham Harries - Chernobyl
Last week we had yet another excellent and enthralling presentation from Graham Harries on visits he has made to the Chernobyl area. Graham is a diverse photographer - photographing weddings, bands, portrait and travel. I like that because I sometimes wonder whether I should have a favourite speciality - I know it's not important really and it's nice to have it confirmed! Graham has also become interested in derelict buildings in his own locality and showed us some recent work, which led us nicely into the main event - Chernobyl.
It was a captivating session showing us 2 seasons of Pripyat (the city which had housed the Chernobyl workers who lived there until evacuation) and Slavutych (where the people were re housed following the disaster). Pripyat is now desolate and abandoned and was the main location for Graham's images.
Pripyat was a very stern place - the usual utilitarian architecture expected in Soviet cities with the odd break in the dismal landscape of a surprising sculpture or some painting providing an unexpected colour in the otherwise grey vistas. The city had housed 49,000 people - all of whom had 3 hours to evacuate and take anything they could once the disaster in Chernobyl had occured! Unimaginable - I don’t even know how to think what that might feel like as an individual.
Amongst many images Graham showed us a Soviet military gym and a very impressive display of old photographs of Russian composers. He likes to find the images which no one else has either noticed or bothered to take. Instagram is full of cliched images of this locality (and indeed those have to be taken as well!) but, spending longer in these localities and employing some ingenuity Graham was able to photograph some unusual and unique aspects. I was surprised though how - with the influx of tourists to the site - some parts of the site have been “staged” for tourist photos - I don’t know why that surprised me but it did.
Another of his images was of signposts of the lost villages -I had no idea there were so many villages which had been affected. A powerful image, with a very powerful story.
In another he showed a dining room and shop which are in Slavutych - I found those a bit surreal but equally as sad as the Pripyat ones!
Through his images he introduced us to two characters - Maria a re-settler and Sergei a guard - this placed a welcome human perspective into his presentation. His story telling also brought the images alive - I said in my thanks to him on Tuesday that it must be the Celt in him, he most certainly is a fabulous story teller.
Recent fires in 2020 destroyed lots of little Dacha cabins - this reinforces the importance of documentary photography. The historical importance of Graham's portfolio must be enormous and some of the images he showed us no longer exist in real life now.
There is something poetic about past abandoned lives but Graham did not glamourise the images leaving them to tell their own stories. Watching the presentation made me reflect once again upon how expendable our lives are and how normality as we know it can change in matters of hours. Also human beings have such a propensity to destroy yet at the same time there is always within us hopefulness of recovery. These thoughts I had in relation to Graham's presentation, but it is not difficult at all to apply the same thoughts (even though the tragedies are different and not really comparable) to a pandemic world.