Pictures of the Year International

pages 22-23 Soon, all 50,000 inhabitants of Pripyat were loaded onto 1,100 buses and taken away. But the evacuation was not temporary. The people were forced to leave everything behind except their documents and money and they never returned—everything was abandoned. Today, the exclusion zone looks like an open-air museum of the Soviet era, time stopped on 26 April 1986. Here, objects of the past are examples of what the Soviet Union was like and what life was like then. Everything is corroded by the passing of time, the buildings of Pripyat are crumbling under the weight of time and weather, the villages are enveloped by nature slowly taking back its space. ‘For centuries, people have lived on the Chernobyl land in harmony with the environment. It was one of the fabulous places. Nature generously endowed people with their gifts. But there is no limit to human greed, man wanted more