The project

Later, when he became passionate about the world of photography, he began to take an interest in photographic projects carried out in Chernobyl and in 2012, also following the nuclear accident in Fukushima (Japan) the year before, he decided to go to Ukraine to see with the consequences of the nuclear disaster with their own eyes and to collect their own photographic/documentary testimony.

Two years later, in February 2014, he decided to return to Chernobyl and stay longer to carry out a more in-depth report and during the winter period, when the snow on the one hand makes the environments visually more interesting, on the other it partially protects from radiation emitted by contaminated dust still found in the ground.

Marco Cortesi documents today’s Chernobyl exclusion zone working with a Leica M Monochrom and a Leica Summilux-M 35 f/1.4 lens made available by Leica Camera Switzerland to carry out this project.

Marco Cortesi

Marco Cortesi was born in Lugano (Switzerland) in 1981. Graduated in Human Geography at the University of Milan (Italy), he is a documentary photographer. After having attended various photography courses and masterclasses both at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York (USA) and with photographers from the Magnum Photos and VII Photo agencies, he founded the LuganoPhotoDays International Photography Festival in 2012 and, two years later, the reportage award now called the Swiss Storytelling Photo Grant, which hosts important names of photographers and photo editors from all over the world on the juries.

ig: @marco.cortesi
web: marcocortesi.ch