Voices from Chernobyl

Contamination checkpoint at the Chernobyl plant. At the end of the day, workers check their hands and feet for radioactive contamination one last time before boarding the train home.

My Chernobyl photos will be screened tomorrow night (Feb. 21) at the Montshire Museum of Science, in Norwich, Vermont.

Sunday's event is a reading of the play Voices from Chernobyl, based on the powerful book of reportage by Svetlana Alexievich.

Alexievich, a journalist from Belarus, spent years interviewing Chernobyl evacuees, liquidators (veterans) and scientists. She weaved together an incredible collection of first-person stories. If you are interested in Chernobyl, or nuclear power in general, this is the first book to read. I recommend the 2006 English translation by Keith Gessen.

The play is part of the noisy debate Vermont is having about the future of nuclear power in the state. The Vermont Legislature will vote next week to either relicense or decommission the 40-year-old Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant near Brattleboro, VT. In the past two months, there have been revelations that radioactive tritium has leaked underground below the plant.

The Sunday event starts at 7 pm at One Montshire Road, in Norwich. More details here.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Last night I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge in the blizzard. Slowly. With my camera. It was, how shall I put it, a little bit on the chilly side. What amazes me, however, is that I was not the only one out there in the gale. There were joggers and pedestrians and other photographers. All of us nuts, every one.

A solitary hardy pedestrian crosses the Brooklyn Bridge despite blustery winds and icy blowing snow. By sunset on Feb. 10, 2010, 7 inches had fallen in Manhattan, although this was enough to slow transportation across the region.

Street crews were working overtime to keep roads clear, with snowplows working on the Brooklyn Bridge 3 at a time.

Pace University freshman, including Twinkle Vakharia, center, play in the snow at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan, before returning to their dorm for hot chocolate.

Snow Day in NYC

Today New York City took the day off. Except the photographers.

The streets were filled with snow — and sledders and shovelers — as the city celebrated a snow day on Feb. 10 with a rare school closing.

Two girls duck under a bridge out of the snow as they take a break from sledding in Riverside Park in Manhattan.

Sledders of all ages filled the hills in Riverside Park.

A man pushes a stroller through the snow across 78th St. in Manhattan's Upper West side.

Alistair Stewart waits to cross Amsterdam Ave. in the snow.

A street sign at 77th St. and Broadway is barely visible beneath the snow.


The snowfall was heavy at times, although accumulation was less than the predicted 12 to 18 inches; by 4 pm, 7 inches had fallen in Manhattan.

Liam Emerson, age 2, tries to help shovel the snow at the 72nd St. subway station.

And now I've warmed up and I'm headed back out for more.

city snapshots

I'm in New York city this week, meeting with a bunch of interesting people. But in between, I'm finding time to take some snapshots. I am reminded why people get addicted to street photography here. The city offers up an never-ending supply of little personal dramas to witness.

Kendall Maxwell (right) and John Doe flirt during a date at BAU bar in the East Village of New York City. (Doe requested that his real name not be used online).

At 2:48 am, Anna from Harrisburg, PA, is drunk as she rides the 1 train uptown to Penn Station, talking about how she hates New York rats, and New York in general, while her boyfriend Zach tries to sleep it off.

This collage was an experiment, to see how the frames looked pieced together this way. Graphically interesting, but I don't think it tells a story any better than the best frame does by itself.

what the frack?

Should New York allow natural gas drilling using an intensive technique called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking?" This question is dividing communities across the southern tier of New York where the gas-rich Marcellus shale formation is found.

Community protestors from across New York state converged on the state capitol in Albany, Jan. 25, 2010, for two simultaneous rallies about proposed natural gas drilling. Drilling opponents chanted "statewide ban" as they marched through the Empire State Concourse.

Some 600 members of community groups and local environmental groups attended a rally in the concourse. “The water has always been good here. We want to keep it that way,” said Onondaga Nation faithkeeper Oren Lyons (center). “Tell your governor he's got to change his ways now.” Other speakers included Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh (D-Manhattan) and Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, (D-Ithaca).

Meanwhile, Senator Thomas Libous, (R-Binghamton) addressed a counter-protest in Lafayette Park, across from the Capitol. Calling drilling opponents "environmental extremists," he said "we have before us an opportunity and we can't blow this opportunity."

Media estimated 250 to 700 drilling supporters attended the event, organized by the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York. The Department of Environmental Conservation is currently reviewing public comments on a draft Enivironmental Impact Statement for the “hydraulic fracturing” drilling method.

Representatives from Oneonta and Elmira-area community groups met with Assemblyman Tom O’Mara during the day of rallies and lobbying in Albany. 327 of the drilling opponents stayed on to lobby their legislators after the rally.

Photography Workshops

This spring I will be teaching a series of photography workshops at SUNY-Oneonta (also known as SUCO). The classes are:

• Introduction to Digital Photography - Feb. 2, 5:30-8:30 pm
• Introduction to Digital Photography - Feb. 16, 5:30-8:30 pm
• Digital Photography 2 - March 9, 5:30-8:30 pm
• Photographing People - May 4, 5:30-8:30 pm
• Nature Photography - May 15, 9 am-noon at SUCO College Camp
  

Each class meets for a single, 3-hour session.

For details about each class and registration, see: http://continuinged.oneonta.edu/noncredit.
Or call: 800-SUNY-123 x2548 or (607) 436-2548.

UPDATE as of JAN. 26:
The classes on 2/2, 2/16 and 3/9 have all filled. We have added new sessions as follows:

• Introduction to Digital Photography - NEW SESSION: March 1, 5:30-8:30 pm
  
• Digital Photography 2 - NEW SESSION: March 23, 5:30-8:30 pm

Thanks!

About the photo above: This portrait I shot of instrument maker Wes McEachron always amused me so I pulled it out of my files. Credit: MFR for UW-Madison.

Caroling for Orthodox Christmas

Father Momotyuk Nazarii (in black) goes Christmas caroling with members of his congregation to celebrate Ukrainian Orthodox Christmas. The group spent two days going door to door through Sukachi and Novo Ladizhichi villages, singing, offering blessings, and collecting donations for the church.

Nazarii is the village priest at the church in Novo Ladizhichi, Ukraine, which was built in 1987 to house evacuees from the original village of Ladizhichi following the 1986 Chernobyl accident. When people donated candy and fruit, the carolers redistributed it to children and elderly residents.

A resident of Sukachi, Ukraine, bows her head as she listens to a blessing from Father Nazarii.

hazy shade of winter

A few weeks ago, my friend Andy Adams at Flak Photo put out a call for winter photos. I just spent a fascinating hour looking through some nominations that came in. There are remarkable and beautiful photos here.

Two faves:
Bejamin Wirtz Siegel
Chibi Lai

And yet: I'm troubled by the entries as a whole. Over and over and over again, these photographers are portraying winter as snowy, bleak and desolate. Or beautiful and desolate. Or icy and desolate. Snow. Fog. Gray. Trees. Ice. There is a sameness to many entries that soon becomes numbing.

Take the photos of empty, snowy roads. I counted at least 8 of them. Ashley Lebedev's version was my favorite, but you know, it is still another empty snowy road.

Yes, there are notable exceptions that show originality:
- Miniatures by Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz
- Bizarre Christmas trees by William Lamson and Peter Riesett and Ben Huff.
- This shot by Rachel Hulin.
But sadly they are too few and far between.

As a photojournalist, maybe I'm just missing the point. Why create photos that are neither informative nor beautiful nor interesting nor entertaining nor surprising nor emotive? I mean no one offense, but I generally aspire to at least one of these criteria in a photo.

In my work, I seek to create beautiful or troubling images that tell a story. The best photoreportage is both aesthetic and narrative. Take for example, Damon Winter's snowy Central Park photo in today's New York Times.

But back to the monotonous desolation. What if winter, perhaps, means a little bit more?

I mean, where are the kids playing in the snow?

Where are the people dying of exposure?

Where are the people, period? Except for some ethnographic portraits of reindeer herders, the Flak entries are often devoid of life.

And if it's desolation you want, why not go all the way? Where are photos of the long dark nights?


I'm not saying my photos are any better than those entered, but at least I hope they show more variety.

Tomorrow Andy reveals his favorite winter shots on Flak Photo and I'll be eager to see his choices.

(All above photos are mine from Chernobyl.)

award winning

Returning home from Chernobyl. In the winter, it is still dark when Chernobyl workers leave Slavutych and already dark again by the time they arrive home. In total, over 3,800 out of 24,300 Slavutych residents work at the Chernobyl plant.

I never win any photography competitions. It might have something to do with the fact that I never enter them. This year, I decided to enter the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar's competition. Partly because I am looking for a gallery or museum to exhibit my Chernobyl project in 2011.

So I was delighted to win the First Place prize in the Pictorial category for the above photo. I always liked this shot that I made almost a year ago, but it got cut from my Inside Chernobyl exhibit because it was too similar -- visually and thematically -- with another photo we included.

See the other 2009 winners here and here.

So there you go. Now you can add award-winning to the list of compound adjectives that describe me, along with hard-working, clear-sighted and big-nosed.

Moscow exhibit

A wall of dials in Chernobyl's First Block control room once indicated the level of each fuel rod in the reactor core. Although the plant stopped producing electricity in 2000, nuclear fuel remains stored inside three reactor halls.

Some of my recent photographs from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant are in a new exhibit, opening this week in Moscow.

The exhibit, ХОТИМ, ЧТОБЫ ПОМНИЛИ (Wanting Rememberance) includes documentary photos and video installations showing life in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone before and after the 1986 accident. The exhibit has work from 5 Ukrainian photographers and filmmakers, 3 Russians, and me. The show, organized by Pripyat.com, coincides with the annual memorial day for liquidators (Chernobyl veterans) on December 14.

Exhibit opening: December 2, 6 pm.

The show runs December 2 to 13 in the выставочном зале «Творчество» (Gallery Creativity), Ulitsa Taganskaya 31/22, between Rimskaya and Marxistskaya Metro stations. (Map here; directions here).

Other events include:
Daily - Screenings of films by Rollan Sergienko
Dec 6, 2 pm - Roundtable discussion by former residents of Pripyat.
Dec 12, 3 pm - Presentation: Status and Future of Chernobyl's "New Safe Confinement".
Dec 13, 12 pm - Presentation: Understanding Radiation A to Z.

Exhibit site: www.rememberit.ru

Download the press release (in Russian) here.

Wisconsin Trails

Today I got the December issue of Wisconsin Trails. They did a nice little article about my Chernobyl exhibit in Madison. I was afraid they would run the photo the size of a stamp, so I was happy to see it runs across a full page.

Revisiting Chernobyl
Madison photographer Michael Forster Rothbart spent a year in Chernobyl on a Fulbright Scholarship to photograph and interview Ukrainians who remain in villages near Chernobyl a generation after the 1986 nuclear power plant accident.

This Forster Rothbart photo (above) shows Leonid Budkovskiy with his grandson Slava. When the Chernobyl plant exploded, Budkovskiy was a mailman in Ivankiv. For four years, he was reassigned to deliver top-secret mail from Ivankiv to the military headquarters in Chernobyl. One after another, the drivers he worked with refused to drive to Chernobyl. He continued, however, out of a sense of duty. His legs slowly stopped working and by 1996 he was confined to a wheelchair. Currently, he spends most days sitting on his back stoop, overlooking the vegetable garden, and getting assistance from his wife and grandson.

"Most visitors think Chernobyl is a place of danger and despair, and so this is what they photograph. For me, however, Chernobyl tells a story about endurance and hope," says Forster Rothbart. "I created this exhibit because I want the world to know what I know: the people of Chernobyl are not victims, mutants and orphans. They are simply people living their lives, with their own joys and sorrows, hopes and fears. Like you. Like me."

Forster Rothbart's next exhibit, Inside Chernobyl, is currently showing in the Ukraine and will open in Washington, D.C. in April with additional showings planned for Milwaukee and Chicago. After Chernobyl can be seen online at afterchernobyl.com.

Hartwick College panorama

Hartwick College sits on a hilltop overlooking the Susquehanna river valley in upstate New York. This panorama was created by digitally compositing 6 consecutive vertical photographs. (Click on the photo to see it larger).

My wife Amy now works in Golisano Hall, the building with the white tower at right.

Infidelity

Last week I had another assignment from NPR's This American Life. To create an illustration for this week's episode: Infidelity — stories of cheating, cheaters and the cheated.

I immediately recalled a book of cartoons my parents had when I was growing up: Sam, the Ceiling Needs Painting, by Woody Gelman. The cover gives a good idea of the content:Great way to imply sex with virtually no bare skin. So I set out to find six feet willing to pose for a photo. (See the final shot with all six feet here.)

This week's photo contest:

Free 5 x 7 print of this photo to the first person who correctly identifies the brand of jeans worn in this photo. Send your guesses to: blog@mfrphoto.com

Deadline: Nov. 8, 2009.

---------
[UPDATE 11/9:]
The correct answer: the jeans were Wranglers.
After making my first contests too hard I guess I made this one too easy -- almost everyone who entered got it right.

The winners are:
1: Jim Gill of Madison, WI was the first to answer correctly. HOWEVER
2: Sara Lynn Platt of Florence, KY was the first one to answer correctly AND follow the submission rules.

Both will get photos.

red maple leaves

Red maple leaves shine through the ripples at the edge of Wilber Lake, Otsego County, New York, on a sunny fall day.

Sometimes it's nice to just get out and make some pretty pictures.

drugs for This American Life

Last week I shot another assignment for NPR's This American Life. They asked me to come up with an illustration for this week's episode — Someone Else’s Money: a look inside the health insurance industry. Aired this past weekend.

After pondering it for a few days, I was hit with a stroke of brilliance (or lunacy) one night. I got up at midnight to fashion this stretcher out of a dollar bill and q-tips.

Last week's photo contest got such great responses I'll try it again.

Free 5 x 7 print of this photo to the first person who can correctly identify the secret ingredient I used to attach the stretcher to the pill bottles. Send your guesses to: blog@mfrphoto.com