“Eye to Eye with Chernobyl” is an exhibition of photos taken by Marcin Jaworski during his trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone back in February 2019. It was first presented on April 26th, 2019, on the 33rd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is a closed nuclear power station located in northern Ukraine, about 100km (62 miles) north of Kyiv. It consisted of four reactors that produced lion’s share of electricity used in Soviet Ukraine. On the night of April 25th/26th, 1986, after a failure of Reactor 4 there was a nuclear chain reaction followed by a conflagration and radioactive contamination that was spreading through the USSR and Western parts of Europe for 9 days. The Chernobyl disaster is considered the worst nuclear accident in history, rated at Level 7 on the INES scale.
In February 2019, Marcin Jaworowski decided to explore the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a 10-kilometre radius area around the power plant. He visited places that were the centres of life prior to the explosion – schools, kindergartens, hospitals and police stations in Pripyat and Chernobyl, cities most affected by the accident. In the vernissage, he presents how the area looked like 33 years after the tragedy.
The exhibition returned to museums mostly in relevance to recent events in Ukraine. It will be open from April 5th, 2022 until May 5th the same year in the Artus Gallery in Torun. On the weekdays it will be open from 10 A.M. to 7 P.M., and on weekends from 12 P.M. until 7 P.M. The entry is free.