Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

by Svetlana Alexievich

I suddenly started wondering about what’s better—to remember or to forget?

I’ve thought a few times that someday they’re going to start hunting the scientists the way they used to hunt the doctors and drown them in the Middle Ages.

It’s impossible to live constantly in fear, a person can’t do it, so a little time goes by and normal human life resumes.

Life is a struggle. An overcoming. That’s why we have this love of floods and fires and other catastrophes.

Once again, we’re just barely surviving. All our energy is directed toward that. But our souls have been abandoned.

Death is already everywhere, but no one takes it seriously.

I wanted to remember everything, so I started photographing