In the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, 350,000 people were presented with the heart-rending decision: to stay in their homes and risk exposure to radiation, or to uproot their lives and move away. The overwhelming majority left. But in today’s powerful talk, Holly Morris introduces us to a group of elderly women who returned to […]
If your home had been devastated by a disaster, would you stay? Why do people choose to remain in potentially life-threatening places? These are just a few of the complex questions that photojournalist Michael Forster Rothbart and filmmaker Holly Morris explore in their respective work, documenting the lives of people living in Chernobyl and Fukushima. […]
In the new TED Book, Would You Stay?, photojournalist Michael Forster Rothbart travels to Chernobyl and Fukushima to try to understand why people refuse to leave these areas despite the risks. Pulling together stunning photos, moving words, recorded interviews and multimedia maps, Rothbart weaves a complex narrative and poses an even tougher question: If your hometown […]
Holly Morris tells the stories of women through documentary, television, print and the web. One story she certainly didn’t expect stemmed from a reporting trip to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. She just wanted to get out of the contaminated zone as quickly as possible … and then she […]