The Toxic Camera

This piece was inspired by the documentary “Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks” (1986), shot by filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko in the Chernobyl reactor in the days after the nuclear disaster. Exposure to radiation, which killed the director shortly afterwards, altered the film-stock he used to shoot his film (the reel was considered “the most dangerous in the world”) and made his film-camera, a Konvas Avtomat 35mm, highly toxic. The camera was buried on the outskirts of Kiev. 25 years later, the Wilson sisters re-created the event, through testimonials from several Chernobyl “veterans”, and Shevchenko’s collaborators. In this reflection on the effects of the catastrophe and on the “material nature of film”, their stories guide us in an itinerary from the nuclear waste dump in Pirogovo, Ukraine, and the architecture of an abandoned military base at Orford Ness, Suffolk, where the artists placed several imposing, obsolete yardsticks. Utilized by the Wilsons to create installations, these objects, which we see in many scenes, function as markers of the passage of time and to reveal presences, while at the same time sending us back to the history of these places and to the strange sort of tourism they’ve recently attracted.