making hay

while the sun shines.

Petro Konovalenko, head of the village council for Sukachi, Ukraine, helps neighbors load hay into their barn. Nearly half the population of Sukachi was relocated here from the village of Ladizhichi after the Chernobyl accident.

Man was I ever dirty after this shoot.

Old family photos

Leonid Budkovskiy and a friend celebrate a successful hunting trip near Chernobyl, sometime in the 1970s. (Photo courtesy Budkovskiy family.)

No, this is not my photo.

As part of my Inside Chernobyl documentary project, I have started going through old photo albums and drawers of old photos with the 15 main families I've been following. We're picking some favorite photos and I am getting them scanned.

I can get a lot more depth of family history by integrating my new pictures with old family shots. I still need to figure out how it will all fit together, but in the meantime it is fun hearing family stories triggered by old snapshots.

I especially liked this hunting photo because Leonid's legs stopped working after his five years at Chernobyl. He has been in a wheelchair since 1996. See my more recent portraits of Leonid here.

Where's the website?

If you tried to visit my website www.mfrphoto.com lately, you've discovered that it is not there.

Gone. Vanished. Up in a cloud of pixels.

Here is what went wrong: Northwest merged with Delta. Really. That's why.

See: no NW = no more NW Visa card = new account number = failed automated billing = big electronic burp = unpaid bill = warning sent to old address = this morning, they deleted my entire website.

Even though I plunked down my electronic 59 bucks before I rushed off to the next thing (packing my bags for heart surgery), it didn't help.

Of course, they could undelete it, but I am not willing to pay their ransom. My homepage will forward here to my blog until I return to the U.S. and have time to deal with it.

open hearts

Latafit and Valekh Sulemanov try to hold back tears as they watch their daughter Parvana, age 18 months, get wheeled away for heart surgery.

I just finished my first day photographing open heart surgeries in Kharkiv for Chernobyl Children's Project International. I'll be back in the hospital for another 12 hour shift tomorrow.

I am also recording audio as I go —— both background hospital sounds and interviews —— so we can later put together a slideshow conveying this experience.

Both the ICU and the Operating Room are tough places to photograph, in different ways, emotionally and logistically. I'm working with a fabulous and dedicated team of volunteer doctors and nurses (3 surgeries back to back? in a baking hot operating room? that's dedication!). The team brought here by the International Children's Heart Foundation, will do 20+ operations in a typical 2 week mission.

Now a few hours sleep before we go do it all again.

Exhibit opening in Slavutych

Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
06.02.09

Inside Chernobyl: life goes on
Photography Exhibition

If you worked at Chernobyl, would you stay there?

A new photography exhibition reveals the inside of the Chernobyl 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 Chernobyl 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 Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The “Inside Chernobyl: life goes on” photography exhibit will be displayed for one month, June 5th to July 3rd, 2009, in the Slavutych museum, which is located at 7 Druzhby Narodiv Street in Slavutych.

The exhibit will open June 5th, 2009 at 7 p.m..

Invited speakers include:
• Director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Igor Gramotkin
• Assistant director of the Chernobyl Shelter Implementation Plan John Baynard
• Slavutych mayor Volodymyr Udovychenko
• Director of rehabilitation centre for Chornobyl accident victims Viktor Odynytsya
• 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 Chernobyl since 2007.

This exhibition was made possible through generous support from:
Chernobyl 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
+38-050-381-3750
nataliegryvnyak (at) yahoo.com
Photographs are available for media use at:
http://mfrphoto.blogspot.com/2009/04/downloads.html
Michael Forster Rothbart can be reached at info (at) mfrphoto.com

###

Congratulations Irina and Bas!

Bas Wels and Irina Leonenko got married in a lovely ceremony at Saint Alexander Catholic church in Kyiv. I felt privileged to attend and take photos, my way of thanking Irina for all her time and invaluable help preparing my exhibit last month.

Congratulations!

media coverage of the exhibit

There was a gratifying burst of media coverage during the first week of my Inside Chernobyl exhibit in Kyiv. Here are some of my favorite stories:

• Global Comment — interview
• Russia Profile — magazine article
• Unian Photo Agency – coverage of opening
• Korrespondent magazine – photos
• Kyiv Post – exhibit preview
• Inter – TV interview (link to come)
• Gamma – TV interview (link to come)
• Uncatalogued Museum – commentary

Some other coverage:

• Afisha magazine – events guide
• The Day – article
• National Radio of Ukraine – news brief (interview audio link to come)
• UkrInform national news agency – news brief

installing my exhibit

This morning we set up my Inside Chernobyl exhibit in Shevchenko Park, in downtown Kyiv. You can see installation photos on Linda Norris's uncatalogued museum blog. Then I had a brief lull to be nervous before our very nice opening ceremony.

I am a very grateful to everyone who made this exhibit possible. I was honored to have such a group of distinguished speakers at the event.

The best part of today, for me, was seeing audience reactions. It's been a laborious 4 months to bring this exhibit from conception to completion. Today it felt worthwhile, as I watched so many passersby stop and really examine the exhibit.

After a brief pause to relax, I will post photos of the exhibit and more details.

Arriving at Chernobyl

Every weekday morning, about 3,800 Chernobyl plant workers arrive at the plant via the Semikhody train station. One former worker called the train platform "the daily fashion show." Immediately afterwards, employees enter giant locker rooms and change into their work clothes.

I love the matching red-dyed hair of these women.

In every exhibit, some favorite photos get cut. I am posting a few this week and explaining why you won't see them in the exhibit.

One section of the exhibit shows an overview of a typical day at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. This photo got cut to make room for a more essential photo at the train station, showing workers passing through the final radiation checkpoint of the day.

Inside Chernobyl

Inside Chernobyl: life goes on

My photo exhibit opens in 2 weeks. Last week, I delivered all material to the designer to lay it out. Now I can take a deep breath before I dive back into preparations.

Inevitably, in every exhibit, some favorite photos get cut because they don't support the story of the overall exhibit or are redundant with other photos.

This week I will post a few of my favorite images that did not make it into the show.

Lira Barbash is sixteen months old and entranced by feeding pigeons. She throws sunflower seeds to the birds while her mom shops in the Moscovskiy Kvartal open-air bazaar in Slavutych.

This is a lovely image, but it does not tell enough of the story of Slavutych, the city that is home to the Chernobyl plant workers. So the photo had to go, alas.