CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/8/2020

In 'Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide,' a possible glimpse of nature’s future order in a posthuman world

Featured images are reproduced from Chernobyl: A Stalkers’ Guide, the newest addition to FUEL Publishing's series of books on the profound aesthetic and cultural mysteries of the Soviet world. In this case, researcher Darmon Richter goes beyond typical disaster tourist hotspots to photograph previously undocumented regions of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where he once worked as a tour guide while making illegal "stalker" forays on the sly. In his Prologue, Richter writes, "Chernobyl today is a place of greenery and life, of branches sagging under overripe fruit, and of wild animals that in the decades of our absence have begun to lose their distrust of humans. Wild foxes will eat bread from the palm of your hand, while all around, symbols of the former regime crumble beneath the burden of flowers, berries and ants. It is a place where the humble might find infinite beauty, where the curious may glimpse nature’s future order in a posthuman world…"