Photographer Gastón Fournier is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project Chernobyl, 35 Years Later’. To see Gastón’s body of work, click on any image.

I am from South America, and I was always interested in the history of the USSR, that vast and distant country that brought so much controversy, for and against. Then, I began to investigate Chernobyl nuclear tragedy in 1986, and its tragic consequences on the population in general, but even more on that small town of the families that worked at the Nuclear Plant. Pripyat, called “ghost town” over time, its inhabitants had to leave everything, even their life, to survive. And so many years later, I organized my trip to Ukraine, and visited the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant and the abandoned town of Pripyat. Everything is as they left those days.

You can feel not only the radiation, but also the desolation, the sadness, and the horror of those people who were exposed for two whole days to radioactive contamination, before leaving their home forever. Impressed by what I saw, I tried to capture it through the lens of my camera, and thus be able to express that environment, and remember its people, its inhabitants, their stories, their lives. Schools, hospitals, and entire buildings are at the mercy of time. Children’s toys, books and radioactive tools on the floor, abandoned, forgotten. I always end up thinking how dangerous man is, trying to tame nature, believing himself superior, can do so much wrong.