The Gates of Pripyat, 2011
Pripyat was a city with a population of 49,000, just three kilometers from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The families there were evacuated the day after the disaster; they could only take a few articles, and had to leave everything else behind. Levels of radioactive contamination are still very high, and the city is unfit for human habitation. Pripyat is now a ghost town which has gradually been engulfed by nature and looted by “stalkers” as they are called.
Guillaume Herbaut did this series of photos on one of his last trips inside the exclusion zone. After seeing hundreds of apartments, all identical and all looted, he concluded that the only original features showing traces of past residents were the front doors to their apartments. In the “Ukraine” building he photographed every single door, one after the other, seeing them as the last family portraits of Pripyat.
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