Chernobyl images: David McMillan paperwork a quarter-century of decay

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Written by Oscar Holland, CNN

When photographer David McMillan first visited the city of Pripyat in 1994, he expected his movements to be restricted. Just eight years prior, a reactor at the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had exploded, forcing a region-wide evacuation and sending radioactive fallout billowing across Europe.

Yet, the photographer was not only free to roam the 1,000-square-mile Chernobyl Exclusion Zone — which remains largely uninhabited to this day — he was able to get within meters of the damaged reactor.

“The challenge was finding people who could get me in,” he recalled in a phone interview. “I didn’t know where to go; I was at the mercy of drivers and my interpreter.

“I had no real sense of (the danger),” he added. “People just advised me that some areas were heavily contaminated, and that I should maybe only take a minute or two to photograph there.”

McMillan's images to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone reveal eerily abandoned buildings.

McMillan’s images to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone reveal eerily abandoned buildings. Credit: Courtesy David…

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