Q: What mode of transportation do you think best reflects your personality? Plane, train, automobile, rickshaw, or something not on this list. Why?
A: I am a intergalactic space rocket. I travel to the most remote parts of the universe and nothing can stop me.
Q: Where is your bucket list trip going to take you and what are you hoping to gain/take away from The Bucket List Initiative travel experience? Include a tentative itinerary.
A: Japan is on my bucket list. To be more precise – Tokyo, Hiroshima and Fukushima region. Back in the 1986 I was evacuated from the town of Prypyat after the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident. I was working on a photo book for the past few years dedicated to the people, who were also evacuated from that town and now live ( or try to) a normal life.
My father, who was a nuclear physicist, worked at Chernobyl and later visited Japan many times to work together with Japanese scientists on radio-ecological issues. I want to go to the places he went and to the places which were also effected by the radiation in order to see how it is perceived in a different culture. I am also fascinated how technological progress and tradition are intertwined in Japan.
Q: What are your creative pursuits and how would you apply them to documenting your experience?
A: I am a photographer and I would like to tell a story of people, whose life was somehow influenced by radiation. Whether it is evacuation, leaving their homes – this is the emotion I want to see and also hear their opinions and feelings on the problem in order to compare it to what I saw and heard in Ukraine. The beauty of the nature, the minimalist living, the abandoned places, which will probably never be populated again – I want to capture all this in a series of emotional photographs and storytelling.
Q: Why you? Why now? Make your case.
A: I am finishing my photo book now, dedicated to the people of Prypyat. I think going to Japan will be a next step for me, without getting emotionally to far from what I experienced in the past few years. Also, it is a 10th anniversary of my fathers passing away and I would love to go to the country, whose people and culture and the way of life he appreciated so much. I have a feeling that I can not only contribute with beautiful imagery but also with showing the outsiders something more than just a usual and stereotypical picture of Japan.
