Of Dust and Echoes: A Tour of The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

by Silent Bill

Silent Bill, street artist and author takes you on a haunting visual tour of the abandoned city of Pripyat. The city was evacuated on 27 April 1986, 30 hours after the Chernobyl disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant which was the most disastrous nuclear accident in history. Pripyat, had been built as a home for the power plant workers. 30 years removed from the disaster the city remains a ghost town inhabited only by nature itself. Silent Bill captures the tone of the city and natures resilience within the pages of 'Of Dust and Echoes'.

114 pages, Paperback

Published April 11, 2019

Reviews

[Linda Lipko · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent photographer, the writer was able to obtain stark images of the continued fall out from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster thirty years ago.
Still, high levels of radioactivity exist not only throughout Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and parts of Western Europe. Closest to the disaster was the Chernobyl plant in the town of Pripyat. Housing workers of the plant and families, the author notes that the population of 49,360 were evacuated.

Also as noted by the author, the images captured seem to appear as though it is a post-apocalyptic horror film.

Highly recommended to those who like me, are fascinated not only by this disaster and the fall out, but the sheer betrayalof the Soviet government who covered up the disaster until radioactivity was experienced throughout countries near, and far from the sight.

[Zachary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know a lot about the Chernobyl incident and the exclusion zone - it's fascinated me for a long time - but I still very much enjoyed this light, tourists-eye view of the modern day exclusion zone. The prose in this slim volume is sparse but engaging, and I actually learned about some architectural features and areas in the exclusion zone that I'd never heard of before, which was delightful. The book's biggest drawback is the clarity and precision of the photographs - the exclusion zone is a photographer's delight, as evidenced by tons of other photos floating around online; but here the pictures seem a bit sloppy and are printed at a surprisingly low resolution despite the beauty of the book's cover. That was more than a bit disappointing, but there were still plenty of interesting elements and images to the book which made it worth digging into for at least a little while.