Elena--RIding Through Chernobyl

[Sven]

http://www.elenafilatova.com

The woman who has posted her motorcycle journeys into the abandoned towns around Chernobyl now has a new website where she was added new material.  I revisit her reports a couple times a year.  The pictures of towns left to rot are haunting, and the speed with which they are returning to nature is amazing.

[Nitro]

Outstanding website. It's a must read.

[SmokeyAndTheBandit]

I have seen this before and everytime I look at it I'm still amazed! Would be interesting to visit but I'm afraid I'd never be able to have children!

[Sven]

I have seen this before and everytime I look at it I'm still amazed! Would be interesting to visit but I'm afraid I'd never be able to have children!

Eh...like that's a bad thing?

[Barbarian]

Two words:

lead jockstrap

[Vlad]

Quote:

Her father is NOT a scientist. She does NOT have an ‘unlimited access’ pass to Chernobyl.

She has never been on a motorcycle inside Chernobyl. If you notice, the pictures including her bike stop when she gets to the access control point. They did NOT let her in.

EndQuote

From: http://maisonbisson.com/blog/?p=10300


Other sites of interest:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Filatova

http://www.pripyat.com/en/

[Sven]

"She has never been on a motorcycle inside Chernobyl. If you notice, the pictures including her bike stop when she gets to the access control point. They did NOT let her in."

Thanks for sharing that.

I guess it's all about what you take away from reading the site.  I didn't really read it for the hard facts, I know that the evacuated areas were left to rot and people could take none of the beloved posionous possessions, and that's what I see in the pictures. Sure, I want to believe that she rides in now and then and finds an empty world, but that's not the essential thing about the images...if she has put real pictures in an allegorical frame, I'm disappointed, but it doesn't make the pictures, or what happened, less true.

After seeing her report for the first time a few years ago, I read Martin Cruz Smith's WOLVES EAT DOGS, which described in reasonably believable detail how there are people living illegally in the evacuated zone, and that the government does maintain a pretty continual presence there, and I did wonder how that fit with Elena's story.

The blatant corruption and political posturing that continues in Russia makes me as suspect of those who discredit Elena as I would be of her reports.  After all, Alexander Litvinenko was murdered for something we assume is a right in the Western world: he accused the Federal Security Service of corruption and manipulating voters.  Instead if simply ignoring him, he was killed.

So, in the end, for me, I continue to value her site for the pictures, and stilll have some belief she has made some of the trips she claims.

But I don't believe she's in her early 30s...did you see her picture?!

[Vlad]

"She has never been on a motorcycle inside Chernobyl. If you notice, the pictures including her bike stop when she gets to the access control point. They did NOT let her in."

Thanks for sharing that.

No problem. I was quite disappointed when I found out too because I was striken by the story like everyone else. I agree on most of your points, although I would argue that fiction is fiction, no matter how close it resembles the reality. Lying about one's age is one thing - manipulating pictures to spice up a fabricated story is quite different. The impact of the story is deep, but her credibility was gone down the drain as soon as she falsified her own identity.

After her site was up she received repeated offers for an interview with some pretty reputable media, but as far as I read never even responded to them. She still has a web site she can provide some verifiable information on if she wants to clarify the facts and clear her name. As far as I'm concerned all the information there is false since the most important claims are obviously fabricated. I got much more from a TV episode on Discovery I watched some years ago. There were interviews with people that participated in the events and the aftermath, scenes from the villages with people that decided to stay in them, stories about the cleanup crews and even footage of the inside of the reactor. That's documentary journalism. Elena's web site is just a poorly written trash novel, no mater what emotions it provokes.

[Sven]

...although I would argue that fiction is fiction, no matter how close it resembles the reality...Elena's web site is just a poorly written trash novel, no mater what emotions it provokes.

Wow, your final comment is a little overboard!  You haven't read enough poorly written trash novels, I suspect.  I can send you a reading list, if you'd like.  

But seriously...there is no such thing as unbiased reporting, regardless of what they taught us in J-school.  Every word a reporter chooses, or chooses not, reflects his desire to tell a specific story, or to convince the world he is unbiased.  A good photo depicts the truth, but everything that is not in the photo is also truth.

Elena's work is reportage of a sort, in that the things she saw are the things she saw; she felt what she felt.  That she maybe didn't go there in secret on a motorcycle is a little less romantic, but doesn't invalidate those elements.

If you believe those who discredit her work more strongly than what she says, that's your assessment, but don't let it spoil what you CAN get out of it.  A well-written fable can be more instructive than a carefully researched report.

[Vlad]

...although I would argue that fiction is fiction, no matter how close it resembles the reality...Elena's web site is just a poorly written trash novel, no mater what emotions it provokes.

Wow, your final comment is a little overboard!  You haven't read enough poorly written trash novels, I suspect.  I can send you a reading list, if you'd like.  :lol:

But seriously...there is no such thing as unbiased reporting, regardless of what they taught us in J-school.  Every word a reporter chooses, or chooses not, reflects his desire to tell a specific story, or to convince the world he is unbiased.  A good photo depicts the truth, but everything that is not in the photo is also truth.

Elena's work is reportage of a sort, in that the things she saw are the things she saw; she felt what she felt.  That she maybe didn't go there in secret on a motorcycle is a little less romantic, but doesn't invalidate those elements.

If you believe those who discredit her work more strongly than what she says, that's your assessment, but don't let it spoil what you CAN get out of it.  A well-written fable can be more instructive than a carefully researched report.

We'll have to agree to disagree then. Elena is not a journalist and her web site is not a report on any actual events. Without going into deep discussions about merits of pictures and their captions I can only say one thing: When I was a photo editor in a national news agency this story would never be published under my watch. She is trying to sell fiction as fact, as simple as that.

[mademiriam]

strange that people would compare a personal site to a national news agency. In my mind like everyone else online she can say whatever it is she wants to say. The readers have to decide, I know enough of the true story just to be touched by revisiting it, and by seeing pictures of it. So she didn't sneak in, so it wasn't some independent biker trip, we are such romantics. To discredit the base emotion because it's not a john wayne story is somehow strange. Like all things on the net take it for what it is.
Yet it certainly can't hurt the world to think about it.

[Sven]

http://www.uer.ca/forum_showthread_archive.asp?fid=1&threadid=8951&currpage=1
 
Vlad, after reading through the posts at this link, I found it interesting how much the dialog reflected the posts you and I have exchanged.

[Vlad]

http://www.uer.ca/forum_showthread_archive.asp?fid=1&threadid=8951&currpage=1
 
Vlad, after reading through the posts at this link, I found it interesting how much the dialog reflected the posts you and I have exchanged.

Indeed Sven. And that was all said three years ago.