Minus 2/3 – The Invisible Flash

CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, UKRAINE

On April 26, 1986, at 1:23 a.m., a series of explosions destroyed the reactor in the building that housed Energy Block #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. The force of the explosions literally stopped time: the rusty clock inside this room indicates the time of the explosion. Nearly 28 years later, radiation here is still so high that access is limited to a few brief seconds.

I shot the room with a wide-angle zoom lens with my camera set on manual focus. I zoomed the strobe to draw attention to the clock and avoid blowing out the wires in the foreground.