Certificate No.000358/

Dutch photographer Robert Knoth has been visiting Chernobyl and other sites of nuclear devastation in the former Soviet Union since the early Nineties. The people in his photographs - many of them children and teenagers - are just like those in the rest of the world except that through no fault of their own they must grapple with the apocalyptic consequences of technological folly.

15-year-old Annya Pesenko (or Chernobyl certificate no. 000358/) has been ill since a brain tumor was diagnosed when she was only four years old and now is bed-ridden. Knoth's straightforward photographs of people like Annya allow viewers to enter their lives and gain an understanding their stories without making a spectacle of their misfortune.

Currently exhibiting at the Australian Centre for Photography
IMAGE © Robert Knoth Gomel, Belarus. Annya Pesenko, Chernobyl certificate no. 000358/ 2005