zone
Ten days at the turn of 2021 into 2022, from the contamination monitor at Dityatky to the ferris wheel that never opened. The Zone is a genre of accidental still life: a doll somebody posed years ago, a cot photographed from the doorway rather than entered. The last frame is me, at the edge of Pripyat, and then the drive home to saturation.
9 entries, newest first.
2022
2021
The Windowsill
· Small things left on a broken sill, the view through empty panes, and the Zone's genre of accidental still life.
Hotel Polissya
· The tallest ruin on the square: the hotel that watched the evacuation, letters still on its roof.
The Cot by the Window
· A mesh-sided cot in the nursery light, and standing in the doorway rather than entering.
The Doll and the Primer
· A kindergarten bench, an open alphabet book, a doll someone posed years ago, and what to do with arranged grief.
The Pool Called Azure
· Lazurny: the swimming pool that outlived the town by a decade, its diving blocks waiting in the cold light.
The Wheel That Stopped
· The Pripyat ferris wheel under snow: an amusement park that never opened, and yellow the frost cannot mute.
Pripyat, 1970
· The town sign in the snow, the nuclear atom in concrete, and a city that got sixteen years.
The Machine at the Checkpoint
· Dityatky checkpoint: a Soviet contamination monitor older than my mother, palms flat on the sensors.