ANDRIY LOMAKIN

The greatest technological disaster in the history of humankind took place in Ukraine on the night of April 26, 1986. After the disaster, a temporary evacuation was declared the city Pripyat (adjacent to the Chernobyl power plant) for a three-day period, so the area could be cleaned up from the radioactive contamination. Everyone could take personal documents and the minimum of clothes. There were 50 000 citizen evacuated from Pripyat, but it turned out that none of them would be able to come back to their native houses. On that day their lives were divided into two parts: before and after the disaster. All of these people suffered a significant psychological trauma.
Eventually, they got new houses and flats in different cities in the former USSR. Nowadays, a lot of these people still live in Ukraine, in Kiev. All of them remember the events of that day very well. Some of them were lucky enough to take and keep their old photographs from the city where they lived.

Watch a slideshow «Two lives» on youtube