Jane and Louise Wilson

Atomgrad 1 (Nature Abhors A Vacumn) . 2010

+ 303 Gallery

In the 'Atomgrad' series, the Wilsons photographed in the town of Pripyat, built in the early 1970s under the former Soviet Union to house the Chernobyl factory workers. Known as Atomgrad (Atom City), the town has lain abandoned and contaminated for the last 25 years...
In the 'Atomgrad' photographs, a wooden yardstick measure is physically placed in each interior, here acting more as a readymade. The recurring motif of a yardstick signals a desire to make conscious the act of entering and photographing these spaces. The photograph encourages us to stare back into the past, into the empty manmade spaces, yet the yardsticks (a means of measurement now fallen into disuse, much like the buildings themselves) play with memory on material fact, on that which had been recorded, measured, articulated and analyzed, for levels of radiation.
303 Gallery

Atomgrad 8 (Nature Abhors A Vacuum) . 2012

Atomgrad 6 (Nature Abhors A Vacuum) . 2012

Atomgrad 5 (Nature Abhors A Vacuum) . 2010