The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and city of Pripyat are officially uninhabitable. Yet for 30 years now, people have returned to live in the zone’s abandoned villages, clinging to the only home they know. Photographer Esther Hessing travelled to Slavutych, built for the evacuated personnel of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant after the 1986 disaster, to document the lives of the zone’s aging residents along with those in Slavutych, many of whom work at the failed nuclear plant to build its New Safe Confinement structure, slated for completion at the end of 2016. Their stories are told in this crowdfunded book, through Hessing’s captivating images and texts by Sophieke Thurmer. Published by The Eriskay Connection (Amsterdam).

144 pages, 24 x 31 cm, paperback,The Eriskay Connection (Amsterdam).