Chernobyl and the Sublime Tourist

Abstract

The Chernobyl disaster has left a number of enduring effects. Aside from the contested numbers of fatalities attributable to the disaster, it has also left a number of physical symbols, and a cultural anxiety about technology and nuclear power in particular. This paper looks at a number of photographs from the Pripyat.com website that appear to share a visual grammar with ‘tourist snap-shots’. An iconological analysis of these images, which attempts to reconstruct the motivations behind such creative representation suggests that they can be read as attempts to capture a sense of ‘unrepresentable’ anxiety created by what has been called a ‘disenfranchisement of the senses’. This can be seen as an instance of the post-modern sublime, an enduring status of anxiety.