Photographer Michael Forster Rothbart’s work explores the human impacts of environmental issues. A Fulbright Fellowship enabled him to spend two years in Chernobyl, interviewing and photographing those who remain a generation after the 1986 accident. He lived in Sukachi, Ukraine, a small farming village just outside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The project resulted in traveling exhibits and a multimedia website, afterchernobyl.com. Past projects have taken him to Bhopal, India, the Semey Polygon nuclear testing site in Kazakhstan, oilfields in Azerbaijan, and the Canadian Arctic.

In 2012, Forster Rothbart spent a month in Japan, starting his next project, After Fukushima. This parallel project on the lives of evacuees, resettlers and nuclear plant workers is exploring how the disaster has shaken Japanese culture and society. Forster Rothbart lives in upstate New York where he photographs and creates multimedia projects for magazines, newspapers and educational institutions.