Chernobyl Project – The Invisible Stain

The Invisible Stain is the third installment of Brazilian artist Alice Miceli’s ongoing Chernobyl Project. The project’s ambition is to create a radiographic series of images of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone depicting the most affected regions located on the Belarusian side of the border. These stunning images are imprinted by the invisible radiation that has contaminated the area since the disaster on 26 April 1986.

Requiring the creation of specific technologies, including the development of auto-radiographic techniques and led-pinhole cameras, The Invisible Stain uses new processes in the field of photography to uncover haunting images of an abandoned place filled by an invisible matter and exposed only through Miceli’s documentation, enabling her to produce mimetic, life-size negative images of Chernobyl’s past.

transmediale festival was the first festival to present the project, showing the results of the initial laboratory experiments in 2008 and further material in 2009. For transmediale.10, this third presentation will present a completed negative series from the final, decisive stage of the work.