The Long Shadow of Chernobyl

National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig, made nine visits to Chernobyl over a period of 20 years; this is his powerful record of an environmental and human tragedy. Through the perspective of the victims living with the emotional and physical aftermath, to the Exclusion Zone created by a massive evacuation (more than 350,000 people by the year 2000), to the abandoned neighboring city of Pripyat, once a scientist's dream in terms of quality of life yet now uninhabitable, it is a record of almost unbelievable suffering and desolation. Working under enormous time and radiation pressure, Ludwig ventures deeper into the belly of the beast than any other photographer, repeatedly documenting the destroyed reactor No.4, which will disappear under a New Safe Confinement for at least 100 years.