A selection of images from Gerd Ludwig’s exhibit, “The Long Shadow of Chernobyl,” opens Thursday, January 23, 2020 at Ono Arte Contemporanea in Bologna, Italy. The exhibit features 14 images from the aftermath of the world’s worst nuclear disaster to date,

“The exhibition at Ono Arte Contemporanea [titled Chernobyl: la lunga ombra] consists of 14 photographs taken inside and outside the Chernobyl plant. This is the presentation of a wider project on the fragility of the world in which we live and on the exploitation of energy resources,” says the gallery site. “[Ludwig testifies] with his camera not only the state of the [nuclear power] plant, but also the lives of the people , the surrounding environment as well as the attraction of Chernobyl to the so-called disaster tourists.”

The exhibit is part of Arte Fiera, an art festival taking place annually across Bologna throughout the final week of January, but images will remain on display at Ono Arte through February 15, 2020.

More information on the exhibit can be found here.

The opening for Gerd’s exhibit, “The Long Shadow of Chernobyl” at the ROSPHOTO State Photo Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, was an overwhelming success. The exhibition features more than 100 photographs from his coverage of the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. The museum is blown away by the response from the Russian media—from television, radio and newspaper interviews, such as the one here, to countless online articles. The exhibit coincides with renewed interest in the disaster due to the HBO miniseries, “Chernobyl.”

“The Long Shadow of Chernobyl” is on display at the ROSPHOTO State Photo Museum until September 22.

Starting November 27, signed prints of the image above are available (at $100 plus shipping) in Gerd Ludwig’s Instagram flash sale for 10 days only. It is the second of two photographs in this spontaneous Holiday print sale.

“Silent Nursery”. Dolls and shreds of mattresses litter the floor of an abandoned kindergarten in Pripyat inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine.

On April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant blew up after operators botched a safety test. While the radioactive fallout started to spread over tens of thousands of square kilometers, on the day of the disaster, children – oblivious to the nuclear catastrophe just 3km away – napped in their cods and played on the floors in this kindergarten of Pripyat, the reactor’s company town. It took the authorities 36 hours to admit to the severity of the accident. Only then the children were hastily evacuated and had to leave everything behind – even their treasured dolls and toys.

The photograph was shot on assignment for National Geographic Magazine in 2005 and is a key image of my ongoing Chernobyl project. It was also published in my trilingual photo book “The Long Shadow of Chernobyl” (essay by Mikhail Gorbachev).

For this flash sale the photograph is printed on an archival 8.5×11 inch Legacy Platine paper with an actual image size of 6×9 inch. It is signed with an archival marker on the front border. Large limited edition prints of this image are in several private collections.

The flash sale ends on December 6th. All prints are shipped via USPS priority mail.

You can order a print by going to my Instagram @gerdludwig and follow the link in the bio or you can purchase one here.

Last week, Ukraine’s minister of ecology, Ostap Semerak, announced that his country is talking to a multinational energy company about constructing a giant solar park inside the contaminated uninhabited Exclusion Zone around the ill-fated Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Of all man-made environmental catastrophes in human history, Chernobyl is considered to have caused the most lasting impact.

Since my first visit in 1993, I have been documenting the aftermath of the accident in dramatic photographs – the failed reactor, the contamination to the land, and the countless victims in the fallout regions, leading to my book and iPad app ‘The Long Shadow of Chernobyl’. Ignoring radiation levels, a few hundred elderly people have returned to their homes. At first Ukrainian officials discouraged them, but they soon turned a blind eye and are even providing them with regular medical check-ups.

A massive cyber attack that has brought several businesses to a close in Ukraine, Russia, and other countries throughout Europe, has also affected operations at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant the New York Times, Reuters and Verge reported. The state agency that oversees the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone announced in a statement “Due to the temporary disconnection of Windows systems, radiation monitoring of the industrial site is being carried out manually.”

In 1986, the world worst nuclear accident to date caused an explosion and a fire that burned for 10 days. The radioactive fallout spread over tens of thousands of square kilometers and drove more than a quarter of a million people permanently from their homes. Reputable environmental organizations estimate that more than 100 000 people have already died as a result of the accident.