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The Helpers of Chernobyl by Igor Starkov
The rays from the colour organ and the gaudy cold of its illumination. A medical device that has no intention of fitting into the cheerful ice-salon-pink of the background, no more than the pair of shoes parked in front of it. The emptiness of a room where one would most likely expect to find corrupt provincial parliamentary delegates. But the meeting is over, or it never took place, and only a single person is sitting here. The parts and the whole, the state and its servants, the atom and the devastating power of its split nucleus. There are many complex levels on which to consider the subject that Igor Starkov has made the framework of his essay on the aid workers following the catastrophe of Chernobyl. His takes are sterile and as silent as death. They exude something insidious, as though the devastating effects of contamination were far from over – which, indeed, is the case. And something else quickly becomes apparent: that this is no longer a question of life and death. Because that is a boundary that the few survivors have long since crossed; it’s something one notices immediately. Thus the strange inanimacy and silence found in many of these pictures is a highly accurate depiction of reality for the clean-up workers. In crass contrast to the manner in which the media made heroes of the New York fire-fighters, those who were hastily commanded to sweep up the debris of these shattered nuclear remains quickly disappeared from the face of the earth: overlooked by the state and by the world. And in the case of these silent portraits, who still testify to the event: so far by death itself as well.
