How did you get into the Chernobyl exclusion zone, and even further, manage to take photographs?
I had a Ukrainian fixer who got me there illegally. He used to work for the Soviet army and had contacts with some army officials who guarded the exclusion zone. You can actually get there through some agencies as a “tourist,” but it is very restricted and there is lots of bureaucracy. I needed to be able to move freely around the area and to have the time to take the photographs I wanted.

Had you embarked upon this kind of risky adventure/mission before this project?
I lived in Buenos Aires in Argentina for some years. I moved there to study cinematography right after the state bank crisis and the massive violent protests. Buenos Aires was quite a dangerous city at that time, there were no tourists at all. I didn’t have much money so I had to live in poorer areas – that wasn’t always fun, I even ended up with a knife at my throat, and in hospital. This period was more risky than the Chernobyl trip. The people in Ukraine were really lovely and it’s sad to see, especially in the northern areas around the Chernobyl exclusion zone, what miserable conditions they live in. The situation in Ukraine feels very hopeless, and the corruption is all encompassing. The people seem to be tired and resigned.
 
Did you ever feel in danger? Could you tell us about the most memorable experiences and people that you spoke to while there?
I didn’t really. I felt uncomfortable a few times when dealing with the fixer and the people who were smuggling me into the zone. There were tricky moments concerning bribe money. Also, I went with a friend, which helped.
Entering the deserted city during a snowy, foggy morning was like a scene from a post- apocalyptic film. The sound was very strange. There was no noise of human activity, but it didn’t sound like normal natural sounds either. You are surrounded by hundreds of falling-apart blocks of flats and other huge buildings, and the wind hitting the concrete creates a very specific atmosphere.

It was interesting to talk to the army officer who took us to the zone, not just about the historical details but about the life there now. What surprised me was the fact that, because there are no people there now, the exclusion zone is the richest wildlife area in Europe. There are wolves and wild horses and other animals you hardly see anywhere else.

Aside from the obvious deeply disturbing historical value, this project also reflects your personal history. Was this a conscious choice or did this arise as the project progressed?
The personal aspect of the project was there from the beginning. The city of Pripyat is frozen in the 1980s. It’s like some decaying museum of socialism. The buildings and the interiors of flats and schools reminded me of my own childhood in communistic Czechoslovakia. That’s why I’ve put a boy with a red balloon in the photographs. The boy from the documentary footage reminded me of the little boy in the well-known French film, The Red Balloon. I wanted to find a way for a Western audience to identify with this East European story in a way that I had identified with the little boy in the playground. To use a well-known Western children’s tale to tell the story of the boy from Chernobyl seemed to be the right tool to achieve this.

Who is the little boy in your photographs?
Originally I was working with a little boy from an orphanage in the Ukraine. But it was quite hard to communicate with the child through an interpreter, so I didn’t get any really direct connection with him. And as the concept of the project developed, I decided to photograph a Czech boy instead.

Why did you chose to use both still and moving imagery - how does the video installation work alongside the photographs? Did you film this footage yourself? And was it in tandem with the photography?
I think in photography you concentrate more on the moment itself, but in film or video you focus on the ongoing process. I wanted to experiment with both mediums and the possibilities to tell the story in different ways. There is a direct connection between both pieces though. In the video installation the boy walks in a loop through the places that are the original location photographs. It is a story that goes on and on, and is a barely reachable vision of some future. The photographs are metaphorical in the same way, but are about the immediate condition and the scene, about being placed in a situation you can’t influence.

I did all photography by myself. The video footage I was directing and had a crew, including a cameraman and green-screen postproduction people.

How have your photographs have been manipulated? What effects do you use to achieve such vivid colour and intensity? Do you hope to achieve a surreal quality through this manipulation?
I don’t believe in the ‘reality’ of photography. I like playing with this issue. Photography is always a point of view. You always manipulate the image, even before you push the button, since you are choosing the framing, angle, depth of focus etc.

Even when we look at some very digitally-manipulated images we still somehow believe in them, even though we know they are far from real. This is so fascinating in photography. I manipulated a lot in postproduction on this project. I obviously photographed and filmed the boy somewhere else and then digitally placed him onto the images from Chernobyl. I didn’t want him to look real and wanted to underline the metaphorical aspect of the story, so I made the boy half transparent. Also I did a lot of manipulating of the colours in postproduction in order to find the right colours and the cold tonality I had imagined for the images.

See more of Hana's work on her jotta portfolio

Exhibition: Friday 12th March – Sunday 21st March 2010

Opening Hours: Closed Mondays, Tues-Fri 12pm-6pm, Sat-Sun 12pm-7pm

Address: 11 Mansfield Street, London W1G 9NZ