I knew visiting the Kindergarten in Pripyat would be the most emotional experience of my time here, so I decided to break myself in gently by starting off with one of Pripyats many high schools.
Gym, complete with hurdles
Climbing frame:
Childs drawing
I found a ‘topic book’ I remember doing these at school. Each term we had a topic I.e. “Water” or “weather” You’d spend a whole term learning that topic, filling in a page ‘in best’ each day. This child must have had “Medicine”
I found myself intrigued, thumbing through this childs hand written work. Each page had carefully drawn guidelines in pencil, with handwriting in best:
Photographs from magazines had been carefully cut out and glued in.
I shalln’t bore you, but for the next ten minutes I was transfixed, taking in the amount of work that had been put into each page:
I photographed every page of that book.
Somehow hoping I could document the time and love that that child put into every page.
Endless corridors spurned endless classrooms. Seeing chairs stacked on tables instantly took me back to my primary school days in Essex, at the end of each day we had to put our chairs onto the table to let the cleaner mop the linoleum with ease. I couldn’t help think these chairs had been put here on the Friday before the disaster just over 25 years ago.
Music Department:
It makes you look twice stepping into a dark room alone and seeing this scene before you:
Piano:
I find another room full of childrens work. These range from topic books again…
…Through to piles of handwritten exercise books, some were stacked in neat piles…
…And some seemed to be strewn angrily over the floor, forming a carpet:
A sample of seeds with hand written labels had fallen from one of the books:
A larger lecture room:
With murals:
Walking down a corridor I saw a non-descript cleaners cupboard, which was glowing with a glimmer of daylight. Closer inspection revealed a rickety ladder to a roof space store. A careful climb led me to stacks of wooden crates filled with gas masks:
From here I could see an obvious route to the roof, and decided to take it. I emerged ontio the hot asphalt face to face with another gas mask. The smell of asphalt in the springtime sun was overpowered by that of warm rubber.
I wandered to the edge, climbed onto the parapet, and respected the six storey drop at the tip of my trainers. I stood and took in the fresh air, looking out over the playground, and the city stretched beneath me.
A sudden gust of wind convinced me to begin my decent the way I’d climbed up. I passed yet more boxed of gas masks. Pillaged by looters desperate to steal the tiny amount of silver contained within their filter.
I made my way quickly back through the building, quickly photographing each detail as I passed
Sports hall gantry:
Textile department
Potting table. A book on plants, and some dried rootballs still remain
Staff room mug:
And chair, moved to corridor
Lenin:
Cupboards of books:
Some printed, some hand written
Green desks
I was passing this playful architectural folly by the canteen, when I was stopped dead in my tracks.
I wasn’t quite sure if I could believe what I was seeing.
Thousands of gas masks strewn across to floor to form an ankle deep carpet,
There were way more masks than there would have been students. The school must have been a community hub in case of biological attack from the west:
I was momentarily distracted by the big soviet till at the end of the lunch line.
My guide mentioned how long we’d been here, and we agreed it would be best to move on. I took one more photograph of the masks almost in disbelief, and left.
Gym, complete with hurdles
Climbing frame:
Childs drawing
I found a ‘topic book’ I remember doing these at school. Each term we had a topic I.e. “Water” or “weather” You’d spend a whole term learning that topic, filling in a page ‘in best’ each day. This child must have had “Medicine”
I found myself intrigued, thumbing through this childs hand written work. Each page had carefully drawn guidelines in pencil, with handwriting in best:
Photographs from magazines had been carefully cut out and glued in.
I shalln’t bore you, but for the next ten minutes I was transfixed, taking in the amount of work that had been put into each page:
I photographed every page of that book.
Somehow hoping I could document the time and love that that child put into every page.
Endless corridors spurned endless classrooms. Seeing chairs stacked on tables instantly took me back to my primary school days in Essex, at the end of each day we had to put our chairs onto the table to let the cleaner mop the linoleum with ease. I couldn’t help think these chairs had been put here on the Friday before the disaster just over 25 years ago.
Music Department:
It makes you look twice stepping into a dark room alone and seeing this scene before you:
Piano:
I find another room full of childrens work. These range from topic books again…
…Through to piles of handwritten exercise books, some were stacked in neat piles…
…And some seemed to be strewn angrily over the floor, forming a carpet:
A sample of seeds with hand written labels had fallen from one of the books:
A larger lecture room:
With murals:
Walking down a corridor I saw a non-descript cleaners cupboard, which was glowing with a glimmer of daylight. Closer inspection revealed a rickety ladder to a roof space store. A careful climb led me to stacks of wooden crates filled with gas masks:
From here I could see an obvious route to the roof, and decided to take it. I emerged ontio the hot asphalt face to face with another gas mask. The smell of asphalt in the springtime sun was overpowered by that of warm rubber.
I wandered to the edge, climbed onto the parapet, and respected the six storey drop at the tip of my trainers. I stood and took in the fresh air, looking out over the playground, and the city stretched beneath me.
A sudden gust of wind convinced me to begin my decent the way I’d climbed up. I passed yet more boxed of gas masks. Pillaged by looters desperate to steal the tiny amount of silver contained within their filter.
I made my way quickly back through the building, quickly photographing each detail as I passed
Sports hall gantry:
Textile department
Potting table. A book on plants, and some dried rootballs still remain
Staff room mug:
And chair, moved to corridor
Lenin:
Cupboards of books:
Some printed, some hand written
Green desks
I was passing this playful architectural folly by the canteen, when I was stopped dead in my tracks.
I wasn’t quite sure if I could believe what I was seeing.
Thousands of gas masks strewn across to floor to form an ankle deep carpet,
There were way more masks than there would have been students. The school must have been a community hub in case of biological attack from the west:
I was momentarily distracted by the big soviet till at the end of the lunch line.
My guide mentioned how long we’d been here, and we agreed it would be best to move on. I took one more photograph of the masks almost in disbelief, and left.