Lost Places - Chornobyl Zone

Frost - sunny, sparkling snowflakes, dull, wet - foggy ... Winter morning in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

It is the fourth final selection of my photos, from a cycle "Seasons in the Zone". I have begun it in less than a year ago. Has begun from autumn and here the circle closed up - outside the window already the middle of September. Anticipating this selection I was going to write about the last summer of 2010. Wanted to write about how hot it was... No, so VERY MUCH HOT! How asphalt melted, how everybody waited for a rain and +40^оС in a shade anybody scared anymore, how everyone in the Chornobyl Zone of Alienation were afraid of fires and the helicopter of "The Chornobyl Dense Forest" twice a day flew about all territory of the Zone, and firemen from Forest Fire Department, all the day long under the scorching sun turn and turn about were on duty on 30-meter high towers... Settled.

This selection of my spring photos of the Chornobyl Zone became in some measure unexpectedness for me. No, I certainly understood that having begun a cycle "Seasons in the Zone" and already having shown its autumn, winter, I need to make as well "Spring in the Zone"... But for any known reason for me, I have been assured that for all these years have not made any really "spring" photo of the Zone. Such as anybody, without having seen in a shot a blossoming cherry or a lilac, at once could feel - yes, it is SPRING! Nevertheless I have decided to try and have look over the archives. Unexpectedly it has appeared much, too much of spring photos. It was necessary to choose from already selected the most "spring". Here that has turned out from all this: "Spring in the Zone".  

Our winters have deteriorated over recent years... The temperature was about zero, snow was just a few and all around sad tarnish. But the winter of 2009 – 2010 has appeared as real frosty, white sparkling fairy tale. Though my photos of different years in Chornobyl Zone have entered into this selection, their big part of them is made in the winter of 2010 in Pripyat and Chornobyl Zone. Even in last winters with little snow it was difficult enough to move in the Zone... It became simply impossible this winter. The most necessary roads in the Chornobyl Zone have dozed with bulldozers, but further... Further snowdrifts, sometimes waist-deep. In the middle of January, we have decided to go for a walk in a small group to the river Pripyat on the Chornobyl Podol (lap). By clear road we have reached stadium, then about an hour we floundered in deep snowdrifts, have crept with difficulty two hundred metres till the end of park... And have shamefully retreat back to the hotel. Yes, the winter of 2010 has appeared as the real WINTER.