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Toxicity as "double exposure" in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

The work highlights the easily overlooked "social and psychological impacts" of the nuclear disaster. His photo essay documents "the personal, embodied, and everyday perspective" of people facing toxic conditions at the edge of the zone. Participants in his used disposable cameras to picture the mundane forms of toxicity they live in. Hence, it builds on a classic move: people are offered the ability to diagnose the symptoms of their own condition.In a related article, he uses "double exposure" as a name for  the specific form of toxicity that people living in zone endure.

Disposable Cameras

This project utilizes the disposable camera to bring interlocutors into the process of ethnographic data production. With these photos, Davies provides his viewers with an emic perspective, as we see what his interlocutors chose to share in reference to their experiences living at the edge of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. The photos themselves are not overly disturbing. In fact, many of them capture the mundanity of life in a way that is somewhat charming.