March 3 – April 2, 1994
I studied to be a painter but realized my sensibilities were more attuned to photography. I was initially
intrigued by how the formal possibilities of the medium determined the way the world looked in a
photograph. I began to travel, interested in how topographic variation offered new picture-making
possibilities. I became increasingly interested in the dynamic between nature and culture which led me
to photograph in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a guarded area contaminated by the 1986 nuclear
accident.
David McMillan was born in Scotland and educated the United States. He taught at the University of
Manitoba School of Art, where he established the photography program. In 1994, he began
photographing in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and has visited the area 22 times over a period of 25
years. The work has been exhibited internationally and a comprehensive monograph, Growth and
Decay, was published in early 2019 (Steidl).