On April 26, 1986 the worst technological catastrophe of the modern age blighted the lives of millions of people, reactor number four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. The explosion unleashed tons of radioactive dust into the air, where, transported by winds it contaminated both hemispheres of our planet. Almost the whole of Europe was fouled: 65 million people were contaminated. It is estimated that the most contaminated areas stretching over 260.000 square kilometers of land, (almost as large as Italy) will return to normal radioactive levels in about one hundred thousand years time. On February 24, 2022, Russia invades Ukraine, starting its occupation right from the Chernobyl exclusion zone.The life totally changed for the Chernobyl community, the Russians left devastation and death behind them. Chernobyl, after 39 years, is only at the beginning of its story, and today people living in the zone and around the zone are struggling among contamination and the war.

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, starting a full-scale war. Having failed to take Kyiv and after the slowdown suffered in the various ground operations in the Donbass due to the strenuous resistance of the Western-backed Ukrainian army, Russia changed its war strategy as winter approached. In fact, Russia in recent months has started to hit power plants to put the population in the dark and cold during the harsh Ukrainian winter. More than half of the country currently lives without electricity, water and heating. Particularly difficult is the situation in the capital Kyiv and its suburbs, which were destroyed in the first months of the war and are continuously targeted by missile and drone attacks on an almost daily basis. Now winter has arrived, where temperatures drop as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. After almost a year, the situation in Ukraine is extremely dramatic and a particularly complicated and difficult winter for the Ukrainian population is in sight.

They were supposed to be used to protect the population of Kyiv from an attack by the United States, but today they are being used for their first time to protect the population from an attack by Russia. Only in Kyiv, there are more than 400 anti-nuclear bunkers scattered throughout the city. They were built by the Soviet Union during the Cold War period and served to protect the population from a possible atomic attack by the United States. They could hold 200 to 4000 people each and were equipped with everything necessary to survive the nuclear attack, which never happened. After the end of the Cold War period, the bunkers were decommissioned. But today, these bunkers full of Cold War relics have paradoxically become crucial for the local population. Indeed, during the constant attacks by the Russians on Kyiv, with almost weekly launches of drones and missiles, the population is taking refuge not only in the subway but also in these bunkers, used for the first time in their lives.

The threat of additional nuclear weapons testing touches all of us, every day. Many countries are on the verge of gaining nuclear weapons technology. The consequences of nuclear weapons tests are under our eyes: The Semipalatinsk Polygon. In Semipalatinsk, In the period 1949-1989 456 nuclear weapons were tested. The impact of the radiation on the population of the nearby inhabited areas was kept hidden for several decades by the Soviet authorities. The nuclear fallout directly affected 2 million people. The villages and cities around the shooting range were never evacuated and the population still lives with the consequences of contamination. What happened on Semipalatinsk Polygon is one of the greatest crimes planned against humanity. The local population was used as guinea pigs to understand the consequences of radiation on people. Today life goes on, struggling among the legacy of the cold war that continue today, and will remains, with its tremendous consequences, for millennia.

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.

Have you ever asked to yourself how is to live on a contaminated land eating everyday contaminated food? Olia knows very well: she got a cancer from that. Like her friend Ania. They are doing chemotherapy like thousand and thousand children here in Ukraine. But they are not the only victims of Chernobyl. Vladimir is one of the few firefighters who survived that tremendous night of 26 April 1986 when reactor number four of Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Now he is fighting against illness due to radiation exposure. Vladik, 7 years old and Igor 6 years old, live in a high contaminated village called Radinka. They are all victims and witnesses of Chernobyl legacy, lIt is too early to know the destiny of Olia and Ania, as it is too early to forget Chernobyl. 30 years after, Chernobyl is just at the beginning of its story.

Karabash, in Russia, is one of the most polluted places on Earth. The city, since 1910, is the site of a copper-smelting plant, and its toxic waste has caused enormous pollution and dire health problems for the inhabitants of the region. More than 180 tons of sulphur dioxide and heavy metals are released into the air every year. Forests, rivers and the soil all have an orange tint because of the residues from the processing of copper and iron, whose concentration is 500 times higher than it would normally be. The immense emissions of sulphur dioxide and the highly polluting atmospheric particulate matter are responsible for the higher rates of skin diseases, cancer, strokes and congenital malformations among the population and their average life expectancy is 45 years. The copper smelting plant has transformed the area into a living hell.

Since 2011, the year that the Ukrainian government has opened the doors of the exclusion zone to tourism, about 15 thousand people per year crosses the border of radiation. There are now dozens of tour operators from Kiev organizing the all-inclusive "Chernobyl tour", a day in the most significant places of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Tourists come from all over the world: US, Europe, Australia, Japan, South America, with the most different reasons: fans of abandoned places or tourists of extreme places, people interested in history or to see with their own eyes the consequences of a nuclear accident. Or just curious. Despite the eternal dilemma whether it is right or not ethically that a place that surrounds one of the most catastrophic tragedies of the modern era could become a tourist attraction, today tourism in this new Pompeii has become crucial. It helps the local economy, 15 thousand people per year are not for a few in an abandoned and interdict place.