Chernobyl: a fever of forgetting

In 1997, photographer Paul Fusco documented the lingering effects of the world’s worst nuclear accident – Chernobyl. What follows are photos and excerpts from his diary.

BELARUS. 1997. Novinki Asylum, Minsk. Unable to walk, these boys move by crawling, rolling, or sliding. Paul Fusco / Magnum Photos

Nineteen years ago, Chernobyl exploded, vomiting 8 tons of radioactive ash into the air which swept across the lands poisoning 25 per cent of the population and 25 per cent of the lands of Belarus. And now the new generation of children bears its legacy through a horrifying and bewildering array of afflictions. Some children are born brain-damaged, others have genetic, physiological, neurological and psychological damage.

BELARUS. Minsk. Children’s Cancer Hospital. Maria is a 9-year-old orphan receiving chemotherapy. ‘At first I cried a lot, but now I think it is a wonderful place.’ All of the nurses in the hospital treat her like family. Paul Fusco / Magnum Photos

Some of the most damaged children are kept at Novinki – a psychiatric institution on the outskirts of the capital Minsk. At birth most of these children are immediately abandoned to the State and within months sent to Novinki.

BELARUS. Maiski. 1997. Nikolai Yanchen, one of 600,000 ‘liquidators’ conscripted to fight the fires and clean up the radioactive ash and contaminated villages. He lost his right leg to cancer. He can no longer work and lives alone in a small village in a contaminated area near the 30km ‘hot zone’. Paul Fusco / Magnum Photos

They are kept clean and fed but they live lives of almost total deprivation. There is no perceived future for them and they are left mostly to themselves. They are not steered to a better life, they are simply trained – if they can be – to eat, to bathe, to go to the toilet, and to follow directions from their carers. Some play with other children but many cannot even move without help. Many live solitary lives, frozen in time and space, reacting in secret with the phantoms that inhabit them.

BELARUS. Minsk. Children’s Home No 1. This hospital receives many of the most deformed babies soon after birth. Nurse Alla Komarova hugs 3-year-old Yulya, whose brain is in a membrane in the back of his head. Paul Fusco / Magnum Photos

Very few of these children ever see their mothers or fathers, most having been abandoned to the State at birth. They grow up isolated without a concept of family, or parents, or even of being a child – lives devoid of historical and biological relationships.