In April 1986, the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant experienced the worst-case scenario in the history of civilian nuclear power. Nearly ten years later, in 1995, the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden commissioned photographer Volker Kreidler to document the consequences of the disaster for people, places, and nature. In 2015 Kreidler returned to the exclusion zone to document nature’s reclamation of the land. In 2025 he traveled to Kyiv once again; the publisher describes these newest photographs as a testimony to the current political situation in Ukraine, centered on the resilience of people in Kyiv and the exclusion zone amid the Russian war of aggression.
Half Life Chornobyl gathers this long-term project, which the publisher frames as visualizing the limits of our ability to control a highly technologized world—from the constant, invisible threat of radiation to systemic corruption and escalating hostilities. Kreidler has dedicated himself to the photographic exploration of Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, working on questions of democracy, education, human rights, and interpersonal relationships. The volume is issued by Hartmann Books as a softcover of 19.5 by 30 centimeters, 248 pages, with 128 illustrations, designed by arc gestaltung, Berlin.
Texts are contributed by Sascha Britsko, Reiner Geulen, Oleksandr Lyapin, and Volker Kreidler, and the book is published in German and English. Kreidler is the photographer; the other contributors are essay authors. In the publisher’s words, the project comes full circle, returning to people first given a voice in 1995 and documenting a society caught between destruction and a will for a new beginning in Europe. Scheduled presentations of the work include Stadthaus Ulm and Haus_1 in Berlin in 2026.
