Maria Shovkuta, the resettler - Ukraine

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The Ukraine 2016

The story behind the photo:

Maria Shovkuta, 90 years old, is opening the door of her house to visitors in the semi-abandoned village of Kupovate, situated inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Maria passed away on July  2020.
After few months of forced evacuation the resettlers came back to live in their homes, challenging the ban of Soviet government. Some of them even never went away. Today less than 100 people remain of the 1200 returned to live in the area shortly after 1986, time and radiations have taken them away. Today the last survivors are very elderly. When the last of them will die, the culture of the villages of the province of Polessie, with their history, traditions and customs will end forever. Memory will disappear because radiation does not just erase life, but also history. They are the last witnesses of the lost places, lost forever.

From the project "Chernobyl Stories" The Ukraine 2014-2019