The Soviets detonated almost 500 nuclear bombs in the Semipalatinsk region between 1949 and 1989 - for testing purposes. It was during the time of the Cold War and both sides of the Iron Curtain were working feverishly on the further developing the bomb. People were more or less defencelessly at the mercy of these tests, which were also intended to investigate the consequences of a possible nuclear war. Today, the immense heat that scorched the steppe has long since fizzled out, the cold war is a thing of the past and Semipalatinsk is a Kazakh city in the east of the state that has been independent since 1991.

What remains is a region marked by sick people. The cancer rate is twice as high as in comparable uncontaminated areas. The people of Semipalatinsk are forced to integrate the consequences of the bomb into their everyday lives. At weekends, newlywed couples line up for their wedding photos every ten minutes under a huge monument to the victims of the nuclear tests, which is represented by a mushroom cloud - and nobody seems to mind. 

Visually, this photo series consists of two levels: there are the landscapes, and there are the people. These landscapes innocently reveal their expanse but are nevertheless contaminated. They are landscapes in which metal cables have been dug out of both the concrete structures and the ground, like moles – a sign of the greatest material need. People went to the former nuclear test site, ventured too close into the contaminated zones with pickaxes and shovels, sold the metal they extracted for pocket change and died a short time later from the effects of high levels of radiation. At least that's what I was told, and there is little reason to doubt it. In Chagan, I met people who still extract metal from the concrete using the simplest of means. Chagan was once a thriving city that was closed to unauthorized personnel until the end of the Soviet Union. It was a secret town only accessible for the employees of the nearby military airfield.

There, in this ghost town, I wanted to get to the upper floors of the abandoned houses to get an overview. There weren’t stairs in a single house that I visited because they contained metal. Is there a more fitting symbol of a fallen and decaying empire than the fact that impoverished people are hammering out the last of its former glory for the sake of survival?

The people I visited and photographed are all victims. They are sick, disfigured and disabled, or are reasonably healthy but are tied up in the elaborate care of their sick relatives. State support is scarce. The marked ones are the manifesto of the invisible in this story. The invisible radiation has changed something in their genetic code, which can lead to very severe deformities and diseases. One example is Berik, who is referred to by locals as the man without a face. His parents lived close to the nuclear test site and were able to see the mushroom clouds up close. This led to uncontrolled growths on Berik's face – making him a man without a face but at the same time the predestined and memorable face of the consequences of nuclear testing.

Photojournalists need protagonists who tell the story. A photographer friend of mine once wrote on his camera: “Faces tell the story.” Berik's face is one of those faces that screams the loudest: Look at the devastation that radiation can cause. For me, Berik's pictures are loud pictures, and we are hungry for such pictures, but sometimes we also forget the importance of quieter pictures. While we're on the subject of pictures: in the retirement home in Semipalatinsk (now Semey), I met the blind Maksh Iskakova (1934). During a nuclear test in 1953, she looked directly into the mushroom cloud of the explosion, although she had been advised against it. Since then, she has been blind. The mushroom cloud was the last image she ever saw.

In any case, I can say that this story represents a turning point for me in a certain way in my attitude as a documentary photographer. Photography, as I had understood it until then lost its innocence.
The view of one's own work changes over the years. When I look at these pictures today, which are almost 15 years old, I can still stand by them. Maybe I would look for a different way of dealing with the victims. Maybe I would show more “healthy” people.

But what concerns me much more is that the threat of the atomic bomb has returned to our minds. Since Russia's attack on the Ukraine, the scenario of a third world war with the use of nuclear weapons is at least not entirely out of the question. Nuclear armament is increasing while transparency regarding existing nuclear weapons is decreasing. Times that were once thought to be over are back with a vengeance and the hope that we have learned from history has faded. Whether future nuclear tests will be carried out in such an inhumane way, using humans as guinea pigs, is beyond my imagination, but unfortunately it cannot be ruled out entirely.

The horrifying thought remains that there could be Beriks again in the future, which will be used as a manifestation of the use of nuclear weapons, whether they want to or not. How present are the images from Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1945? Does forgetting also erode the inhibition against using nuclear weapons again?