Journey to real loneliness
Lasse Arkela made a trip
to a city without people
> When the reactor No 4 in the
Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded
twenty years ago, on April 26th
1986, Lasse Arkela was a first
grader in elementary school in
Kauhajoki, in southern Ostrobothnia.
World of this little kid wasn’t
shattered.
“I have no recollections of the
accident, when it happened”, says
Arkela now.
Word Chernobyl was strange
and distant for a long time.
But it isn’t any more. In January
this year Lasse Arkela traveled to
the closed zone around the shut
down power plant to photograph
its biggest town Pripyat.
An account of the trip in the form
of a photo exhibition and an
internet site was titled Pripyat –
population zero.
What in the world makes a
young man leave to an evacuated
town in Ukraine polluted by a
nuclear disaster during his first
paid vacation?
“Last
summer
in
Yann
Arthus-Bertnand’s Earth From
Above in Lasipalatsi there was one
picture of the deserted town of
graveyard of vehicles, where all the
trucks, helicopters and other
vehicles, contaminated in rescue
work, were stacked up.
“The area was very peaceful, most
of the time there were just the two
of us; me and my guide. In the
harsh landscape I saw many very
beautiful things.”
The exclusion zone was an
unintended wildlife resort, because
the animals could move around
there undisturbed.
“We saw tracks left by wolves on
the snow”, Arkela reminds.
“Vegetation takes over the concrete
town step by step. Trees and
bushes were spreading in the
streets and growing in doorways.”
Pripyat” says Arkela.
The picture hit hard, and Arkela
started seeking for more information on the internet.
He had recently moved to Helsiki
and knew hardly anybody in the
city. Life was revolving around
work and home. It felt, that
something ought to be done.
The loneliness met in the new
home town provoked the idea to
for seek the true loneliness.
The people renting rooms
in Kiev were found on the
internet, and the self-made
photographer hopped on board.
“Everything went fine. The local
Chernobyl information office
arranged access passes and photo
permissions, and got me a guide,
who was also a driver and an
interpreter.”
Pripyat was a surreal experience.
“The town, by a Finnish standards,
was very nice. It had everything,
that a town should have: hospital,
kindergarten, schools, theatre,
swimming hall – but not a single
citizen.”
Pripyat was built during the
1970s for the workers of
Chernobyl nuclear power plant. It
had 47 000 inhabitants, when the
Lasse Arkela is planning his next
trip to Israel.
disaster took place and they were
all evacuated.
The wildest thing was to wonder
around in all the apartments
suddenly left behind.
“Empty industrial buildings are
found in Finland as well”, Arkela
thought.
“People were said that they’ll be
gone only for a short period of
time, so that they wouldn’t take
their belongings, contaminated by
radio-activity, with them.”
The Photographer was
wondering about, as long as
the winter day was bright, two days
in Pripyat and a one in a close-by
Lasse Arkela doesn’t know
where the citizens of Pripyat went.
“Some of them returned, despite
numerous warnings, to the little
villages in the area. I was also
amazed that it seemed there were
hundreds of people working inside
the exclusion zone. The Chernobyl
nuclear plant was shut down in
2000.”
Is it still dangerous to be inside the
zone?
“My guide had a radiation meter
with him and the readings in it
varied a lot. Suddenly the reading
jumped over 900, when normal
background radiation is 12. My
guide was carefree about it.
“But estimates of the time that the
area can be re-inhabited vary
between 300-900 years.”
Lasse Arkela’s picture of the Pripyat hospital.
Lasse Arkela: Pripyat Population Zero. Exhibition
in Kauhajoki, in empty business
premises (Topeeka 52) Until 14.5.
In internet www.4life.fi/pripyat