I have these moments, where I find out information on a place, then I find the most iconic image that represents said place. But nothing speaks to me more than this ferris wheel.
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| Meet the Ferris Wheel. It never saw use in its life. |
I have always held an interest in abandoned towns, and when I saw the image of this Ferris wheel standing alone amidst a backdrop of buildings that have been forgotten by man I was immediately attracted to it. There is something about a city lost in time, with the elements left to take it over. It speaks to me in such a way that only urban decay can.
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| The remnants of Chernobyl can be seen on the horizon. |
Pripyat sits in Northern Ukraine and sits about 3Km from the Chernobyl plant itself.
Pripyat was a planned town and a factory town. It was an artificial town that was built from scratch in 1970 for Chernobyl Nuclear Power plant workers. About 50,000 people lived in Pripyat before the Chernobyl incident in 1986. Annual growth of population was estimated at around 1,500 including 800 new-born citizens and over 500 newcomers from all the corners of the Soviet Union. It was planned that the Prypiat's population should rise up to 78,000 in the nearest future. Prypiat had a railroad link to Kiev Yazov station as well as a navigable river nearby.
Everything that was owned by the scientists families were left behind during the evacuation of the town during the Chernobyl disaster.
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| That Ferris Wheel |
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| Living Quarters |
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| Utterly Horrifying |
My love for such a town as this has to be this. We build. We destroy. We abandon with out much of a thought on what may come of a place. What comes to mind to me is the Poem by Sara Teasdale "There Will Come Soft Rains"
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
All of these photos are from Pripyat.
Appreciate what you see, there's art in every nook and corner around the world. Not matter how beautiful, dark or foreboding a place looks, theres always a treasure. There's always something. The things we abandon will stand the test of time as nature takes back what was once her's. Pripyat is a fine example. A large town lost to radiation, but slowly being taken back by the earth. Its a beautiful process and for anyone to be allowed to photograph it, to see it with their own eyes. I envy them. I like to imagine taking my camera to Pripyat and taking photos of the Ferris Wheel, the hospital, the grapehitti on the walls. Even in town I look for places that I shouldnt go into, simply because I want to photograph it, because i want to see the beauty in decay.
