Chernobyl.

The name evokes the chilling imagery of a ravaged nuclear reactor, tens of thousands of displaced Soviets fleeing radiation-contaminated homes, the ghostly overgrown landscape today. But that is not what the Ukrainian photographer Maxim Dondyuk has sought out during his exhaustive trips to the Chernobyl exclusion zone over the past few years.

Before the nuclear disaster in 1986 made 1,000 square miles of land uninhabitable to humans for thousands of years to come, Ukrainian families lived in cities and villages within the region, some for many generations. They attended school, went sailing, traveled, celebrated Christmases.

Mr. Dondyuk, who was born three years before the nuclear reactor exploded, found decaying pictures in the abandoned homes and buildings that encapsulated the previous era. He wants to ensure it isn’t forgotten.