The project
Why Chernobyl
Marco Cortesi was indirectly affected by the Chernobyl disaster at the age of five, when — without knowing the reason — he could no longer play in the garden at home.
Later, when he became passionate about photography, he began to take an interest in photographic projects carried out in Chernobyl. In 2012, also following the nuclear accident in Fukushima (Japan) the year before, he decided to go to Ukraine to see the consequences of the nuclear disaster with his own eyes and to gather his own photographic and documentary testimony.
Two years later, in February 2014, he decided to return to Chernobyl and to stay longer, to carry out a more thorough reportage and to do it in winter, when the snow on the one hand makes the places visually more interesting, and on the other partly shields from the radiation emitted by the contaminated dust still lying in the ground.
