Checkpoint dogs: Photovoicing canine companionship in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

Abstract

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is often depicted as either a wildlife refuge or an apocalyptic wasteland, which is representative of the ongoing scientific controversy regarding the effects of the 1986 nuclear catastrophe on nature in the Zone. In this article, the filthy/flourishing binary is disrupted by attending to the everyday human-dog relations that have emerged in the Zone between dogs - some of which are likely descendants of pets originally abandoned during the evacuation in 1986 - and checkpoint guards. Participatory photography is deployed as method. Themes of companionship, care and commensality emerge alongside a discussion of the nature of Chernobyl dogs, which is invoked in discourses surrounding their apparent wildness, territoriality and adaptation to radiation.