The Moment: Gomel, Southern Belarus - July 2005
The Age
Saturday April 19, 2008
I had been travelling, for about six years, to the sites of several nuclear disasters in the former Soviet Union and photographing the people whose lives had been devastated by the fallout. The inhabitants of Gomel, a city in southern Belarus, have been, and continue to be, severely affected by the worst nuclear power-plant accident in history - at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986.
This girl is Annya Pesenko; she turned 18 last month. She is battling her second brain tumour and carries a special-issue Chernobyl Certificate to access subsidised medication. Her illness is a direct result of the toxic plume of radioactive fallout that covered up to 60 per cent of Belarus after the explosion.Tragically, Annya is representative of so many in the region. Her prognosis is bad: doctors gave up on her in 2005 and, when I met her, she was being cared for, at home, by her mother and father. She can barely speak, hardly move and must be turned every 15 minutes to prevent bed sores developing and aggravating the lesions that cover her body. She is in near-constant pain. I hardly dared photograph her she was so fragile. But at one point during my visit to her home, she felt a little better and her parents let me enter her room to take this portrait. This was the only time I was alone with her. I wanted to leave, leave her in peace - it was almost too intimate - but as she rallied that morning, the expression on her face became so serene. The following year, I received an email from the hospice that is now taking care of her, telling me she'd received a copy of the book with her picture in it. It meant a lot to her, they said, and to her parents, who realised the importance of documenting her life. Often the story behind a photo is as compelling as the image itself. Readers are invited to submit copies or scans of their own photographs (no originals, please) and background-story outlines to The Moment, Good Weekend, GPO Box 1939, Melbourne, 3001 (include a stamped, self-addressed envelope for return if required) or email image and story to goodweekend@fairfax.com.au.THE BOOK CERTIFICATE NO. 000358 / BY ROBERT KNOTH AND ANTOINETTE DE JONG IS AVAILABLE AT THE AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY, SYDNEY (WWW.ACP.ORG.AU), $90
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