Field note 09-05-16-2 (Bookshop Pripyat, Chernobyl), 2013–2016

Moldy books lie strewn on the floor of a derelict bookstore in Pripyat never to be opened and read again. This work, part of the series ‘From the Pit of Et Cetera’ by Raúl Ortega Ayala (1973, Mexico), is devoted to concepts of absence, trace, and social amnesia. For it, Ortega Ayala travelled to an uninhabited area in the Ukraine directly affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident of 1986. Over a period of three years, Ortega Ayala documented the aftermath of this environmental disaster of catastrophic proportions caused by a breakdown in man-made technology. Ortega Ayala’s work is a chilling reminder that nature is precious, a vital part of our shared heritage that must be protected for posterity.