HOME | DD

Description
This initially started as an abstract idea while I was reading Martin Cruz Smith's WOLVES EAT DOGS, a novel that takes place around Pripyat in the Ukraine. His vivid descriptions of "black villages" around Chernobyl aglow with radiation, deformed and dying life, especially the pine forests of a deeply saturated orange color prompted me to recreate something similar visually. A few days later, I was passing by a local GM plant, and was taken aback to see that it was coming down. At that point the whole plant was intact, although its interior was fully exposed. When I came back to take some phtographs a few weeks later, I learned that that morning a demolition company had been busy with setting explosives. It turned out I had arrived just in time. I took about 30 pictures of the various elements of the site, trying to fit my lens between the links of the fence and "no trespassing" signs. When I combined some of them, this is what came out. The radioactive feel of the ground, the overcast sky, the solitary dead tree, and eerie light source from behind the ruined plant come close to what I had imagined in my mind's eye while reading the novel.

Description
This initially started as an abstract idea while I was reading Martin Cruz Smith's WOLVES EAT DOGS, a novel that takes place around Pripyat in the Ukraine. His vivid descriptions of "black villages" around Chernobyl aglow with radiation, deformed and dying life, especially the pine forests of a deeply saturated orange color prompted me to recreate something similar visually. A few days later, I was passing by a local GM plant, and was taken aback to see that it was coming down. At that point the whole plant was intact, although its interior was fully exposed. When I came back to take some phtographs a few weeks later, I learned that that morning a demolition company had been busy with setting explosives. It turned out I had arrived just in time. I took about 30 pictures of the various elements of the site, trying to fit my lens between the links of the fence and "no trespassing" signs. When I combined some of them, this is what came out. The radioactive feel of the ground, the overcast sky, the solitary dead tree, and eerie light source from behind the ruined plant come close to what I had imagined in my mind's eye while reading the novel.