Editor's Note: With a week to go, Alina Rudya is less than 2,300 euros away from her goal of raising 10,000 euros for her Kickstarter project to photograph former residents of her hometown of Prypyat, the city closest to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. After the 1986 explosion, the city with 50,000 residents became a ghost town.
Berlin-based Ukrainian photographer and former Kyiv Post staff writer Alina Rudya has become one of the first artists to launch a crowd-funding campaign on Kickstarter's new German site. Entitled "Prypyat mon Amour," her project will tell the stories of the citizens of Prypyat, the closest city to the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The residents were hurriedly evacuated in the wake of the Chornobyl disaster in 1986.
Read Alina Rudya’s April 22, 2011 story “Prypyat Memories” in the Kyiv Post
Rudya and her family lived in Prypyat at the time, which happened when she was only one year old. Her father, a scientist, was working overnight at the plant on April 26, 1986. Within two days of the accident, the whole town was abandoned.
Rudya first returned to her childhood home in 2011, writing about her experience in a Kyiv Post article entitled “Prypyat Memories.”
“From all the apocalyptic horror movies you’ve seen you can imagine these rows of empty houses with holes instead of windows,” she says, describing the city today. “And that’s the scary side, but if you go in spring or summer, it’s so vividly green with the flowers taking over the houses, it’s not scary at all.”
Her journey of rediscovery resulted in her “Prypyat mon Amour: Part 1” photo exhibition, which was presented at Berlin’s Sur la Montagne Gallery in 2012. The dreamlike self-portraits depict nature gradually taking over the lost city, with saplings pushing through cracks in tiled floors and overgrown greenery blocking off doorways.
Now, she hopes to raise €10,000 to fund the expansion of her work into a photo essay, which will be published in spring 2016. The timing is particularly important to Rudya, who has always dreamed of building upon her original project.
“I always thought I would do it someday,” she says. “With the 30th anniversary of Chornobyl arriving, I realized it’s either now or not for another 10 years.”
The money raised will be used to finance Rudya returning with fellow evacuees to the Chornobyl exclusion zone, where she intends to photograph her subjects against the backdrop of the ghost town that was once their home.
Prypyat had a population of almost 50,000 people in 1986, all of whom were displaced by the disaster. Rudya is in contact with many of her former neighbors, explaining that a large percentage of the evacuated residents resettled in Kyiv and have stayed in touch.
For Rudya, this is an intensely meaningful project, representing a milestone in both her professional and personal life.
“It’s not just important for me, but for the people who have no voice, whose stories have never been told,” she says.
Rudya has until June 21 to meet her target under Kickstarter guidelines. As of May 14 the project received just €726 out of the intended €10,000. Backers can pledge any amount of €1 or more, and will only be charged if the project succeeds in reaching its target. The eventual outcome of the project will be 150 high-quality photobooks with 80 pages of images, taken in and around Prypyat.
To support Alina Rudya’s work, visit
