Inside Chornobyl: Life Goes On
Photography Exhibition

If you worked at Chornobyl, would you stay there?

A new photography exhibition reveals the inside of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant today, focusing on the everyday lives of nine people who still work there. Created by an American photographer and Fulbright Scholar, this exhibition honors all those who work inside the Chornobyl plant, and the city of Slavutych where they live.

Highlights of this unusual exhibit are:

• Two 7-meter-long circular panoramas, showing Control Room 1 and the entire plant, giving visitors the impression of standing inside the site.
• Never-before seen photographs from inside the 4th Block “Object Shelter.”
• Life stories told by the people who work at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.

The “Inside Chornobyl: life goes on” photography exhibit will be displayed for two weeks, April 24 to May 8, 2009, in Shevchenko Park, Kyiv, to coincide with the April 26th anniversary of the Chornobyl accident.

The exhibit will open April 24, 2009 at 3 p.m., in Shevchenko Park, near Lva Tolstogo metro station.

Invited speakers include:

• U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor
• Director of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant Igor Gramotkin
• Director of the Chornobyl Shelter Implementation Plan Laurin Dodd
• Slavutych mayor Volodymyr Udovychenko
• National Chornobyl Museum Scientific Director Anna Korolevska
• Photographer Michael Forster Rothbart

The five families profiled were chosen to represent a diverse cross-section of their community. Through large-scale photographs and texts based on personal interviews, viewers will learn about the workers’ jobs and lives.

The exhibit was created by American photojournalist Michael Forster Rothbart, in cooperation with residents of Slavutych. Forster Rothbart is a U.S. Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine. He has been photographing the lives of villagers near Chornobyl since 2007.

This exhibition was made possible through generous support from:

• Chornobyl Shelter Implementation Plan Project Management Unit
• Fulbright Program in Ukraine
• United States Embassy in Ukraine

For more information and media accreditation, please contact:
Natasha Gryvnyak, Exhibit public relations manager
Tel.: 80503813750
e-mail

Photographs are available for media use at: mfrphoto.blogspot.com/2009/04/downloads.html
Michael Forster Rothbart can be reached at info@mfrphoto.com