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Pierpaolo Mittica

Photographer

Pierpaolo Mittica

Chernobyl fractures

My work focuses on the contradictions that exist today in Chernobyl and the photographs must be seen as diptychs, two photographs side by side and the captions are very important to understand the full story.
After the Chernobyl nuclear accident on 1986 an exclusion zone was created and 116 thousand people were evacuated. The area thus became a dead zone. But today the zone is not so dead, in fact is full of life even if it is the most contaminated place in the world.
Still today there is the local population that suffers the consequences of radiations, and workers that must do a very risky work inside the zone, but there are also tourists, stalkers, Hasidic Jewish that come to visit the zone, that became a sort of amusement park.
Today the Chernobyl dead zone is full of contradictions, among life and death, and lives more than ever through its contradictions and fractures.

Pierpaolo Mittica

An internationally renowned, award-winning photographer and filmmaker, his photos have been exhibited in Europe, the United States and China and have been published by Italian and foreign newspapers and magazines, including l'Espresso, Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, Panorama, Il Sole 24 ore, Days Japan International, Asahi Shinbum, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Spiegel, De Zeit, Wired USA, Asian Geo, China Newsweek, National Geographic USA. He has received more than 100 international awards including 7 "Pictures of the Year International", 2 "Days Japan international Photojournalism Awards" as well as being a finalist for the "Eugene Smith Grant", "Alexia Foundation Grant", "Leica Oskar Barnack Awards", World Report Awards, Sony World Photography Awards. His documentaries have been broadcast by: Amazon Prime Video, Al Jazeera, Discovery Channel USA, RSI TV Switzerland, TVN 24 (Poland), Societé Radio Canada (Canada), Slovakia 1 E 2 (Slovakia)