‘The disaster of Karabash’ is taken in the city of Karabash, Russia.

One early Sunday morning in September 2020, Ksenia and her dad set off for a 6 hour drive from our hometown Ufa towards the city of Chelyabinsk – he wanted to show her a unique yet ominous place, a place where an ecological catastrophe took place, Karabash. Karabash is one of the largest copper-smelting centers in Russia.

After a century and a half of copper extraction, plant life in the city has practically died out and the ecosystem of the surrounding area has been destroyed. The city and its outskirts have been subject to acid rain since the 1970s. In 1996, Karabash and its surrounding area were declared an ecological disaster zone by order of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.