Blind and disfigured from birth, 13-year-old Berik Sysdykov lives downwind of the old Semipaltinsk test site in northeastern Kazakhastan, where inhabitants attribute a plague of birth defects to nuclear fallout.
Between 1949 and 1989 nearly 500 nuclear devices were detonated here.

Semey (Semipalatinsk) / Kazakhstan, 1992