Cosplay isn’t just about cool costumes and pretty pictures.
Maul Cosplay is renowned for his portrayal of Geralt of Rivia. But in his latest shoot as Joel from The Last of Us, he went to Chernobyl to take some truly breathtaking photographs, and send a message about the beauty and fragility of the Earth.
The shoot took place in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone — a 2,600 km2 section of Ukraine that surrounds the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which exploded in 1986. To date, it is the worst nuclear disaster that the world has ever suffered.
The site is no stranger to interest. In fact, tourism allegedly became more popular after the abandoned town of Pripyat appeared in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
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Maul offers his thoughts and reasons behind the shoot in many of the photo descriptions in his Facebook album, in collaboration with fellow cosplayer Maja Felicitas. In addition to remembering the tragedies of the past, he hopes to celebrate nature.
In the album description, Maul addresses whether the shoot is disrespectful to the victims of the Chernobyl disaster. He sees it as an opportunity to remember and educate.
“In my opinion it is way more disrespectful to let these places and events be forgotten. I talked to a lot of people about Chernobyl lately and there were many who didn’t know much or even nothing about it. This can not be. Of course we ALSO went to Chernobyl to take the most authentic TLOU pictures we had in mind. I would never fight that.”
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You can see more from this shoot and Maul’s other work at the Maul Cosplay Facebook page.
Comments
4 responses to “This Last Of Us Cosplay Was Shot In Chernobyl”
Are we sure this is legit? In no photo is he actually touching an object in the scene (maybe you’re not allowed to touch – the sitting scene could be done easily and the grey pillow thing shopped in). There’s something… odd about the lighting. I mean, of course the pic is post-produced to breaking point and that doesn’t mean he isn’t actually there but…
When a pic looks like it COULD have been done with green screen, one will always wonder…
Tons of people live in and around Chernobyl, large parts of it have very low levels of unnatural radiation or none at all.
A lot of the abandoned buildings and areas remained that way because nobody came back, not because of radiation.
It’s those areas that people tend to visit and see.
Oh I know the Exclusion Zone is a total tourist trap now, and that’s it’s perfectly POSSIBLE this really was shot there…
…and I know the post processing is done to make it look like a videogame for obvious reasons…
…but still the doubt remains.
Nah, man. I’ve seen Chernobyl Diaries.
Innocent photoshoot. Then someone on the crew hears a scratching noise and giggling coming from a few rooms over, and says: “Did anyone else here that?…”
Then there’ll be: “Whatever happened to that dude that used to cosplay Geralt of Rivia really well?”
And the reply will be: “Yeah, him and his film crew went missing in Chernobyl…”