Voices from Chernobyl Archive

Svetlana Alexievich’s Verbatim Theater

Author: |
Oct
24
2023
 Categories: Critical Essays No comments

historical black and white photograph of a a figure in a hazmat suit spraying the wheels of a car out of frame with a hose - other people in the photograph are also wearing hazmat suits, the images comes from a collections of the Chernobyl accident from the Ukrainian Society for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries

In her exploration of the Chernobyl disaster, Svetlana Alexievich dramatizes history—as she insists, we can only understand events of this magnitude by recasting them on a human scale.

Iconography of a Disaster: Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl

Author: |
Jul
03
2017
 Categories: Critical Essays No comments

chernobyl_sarcophogus

Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, about the nuclear reactor meltdown at Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, opens with Lyudmilla Ignatenko, whose husband Vasily was one of the first firefighters to respond to the scene.