BIOGRAPHY
Darmon Richter is a British writer whose work has a strong focus on place, as it explores the intersection of themes such as architecture, film, video games, memory, futurism and mythology.
Darmon has written for a long list of publications, including: Atlas Obscura, The Verge, Foreign Affairs, Hidden Europe, and CNN. Since 2011 he has been the author of Ex Utopia, a website sharing long-form travel writing and documentary photography, and which has frequently been covered in the mainstream media – including his reports on China’s ‘Ghost Cities’; the unfinished Soviet nuclear power plant in Cuba; and the appearance of rare Pokémon in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Darmon has provided location scouting services for the BBC, Vice Media and Red Bull TV, and he worked as a location advisor, editor and photographer on the Collins publication Abandoned Places (Richard Happer, 2016). That same year he authored four chapters for Global Undergrounds, published by Reaktion Books (Dobraczyk, Galvis & Garrett, 2016). His photography has been featured in places such as Radio Free Europe, Buzzfeed, The Wall Street Journal and Scientific American, and in exhibitions in six countries – including an installation at the North Macedonian Pavilion for the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale.
In 2015, Darmon began designing tours of architectural heritage sites in post-socialist space. To date he has led tours in 10 countries and one post-Soviet frozen conflict zone, often in the process raising funding for local causes or conservation projects.
After making roughly twenty trips into the Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, his debut book – Chernobyl: A Stalkers' Guide (FUEL, 2020) – paints an intimate portrait of the Chernobyl region and its inhabitants, three decades on from the disaster; with Financial Times calling it one of the "Best books of 2020.”
© Darmon Richter 2020