TETCHA by Deep Ohm

From 1949 to 1956 the Mayak complex dumped an estimated 76 million cubic metres (2.7×109 cu ft) of radioactive waste water into the Tetcha River, a cumulative dispersal of 2.75 MCi (102 PBq) of radioactivity.

As many as forty villages, with a combined population of about 28,000 residents, lined the river at the time. For 24 of them, the Tetcha was a major source of water; 23 of them were eventually evacuated. In the past 45 years, about half a million people in the region have been irradiated in one or more of the incidents, exposing them to as much as 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl disaster victims.



Photographies & art by Szymkowiak Joseph

Recorded at Peltre, France in September 2016 after watching the beautiful and scary documentary Métamorphoses by Sebastian Mez.