Anatoly Rasskazov
The story of the first man to photograph the wreckage - on April 26, 1986.
BBC
It was a weekend. Everyone was relaxing, or preparing for the 1 May parade, when the power station was meant to receive the Order of Lenin and become a Hero of Socialist Labour.
There were rumours of a minor accident at the station, but I cleaned the windows of our flat in Pripyat as usual. Then at about 9am I was summoned urgently to the station.
No-one believed that something so awful could occur.
I went down into the bunker where the authorities were working, and I understood that they did not really know whether the active zone of the reactor was destroyed or not. They wanted pictures taken from above to see what had really happened.
In the helicopter, there were two soldiers and two civilians from Atomenergo, who had flown down from Moscow. There was so much ash flying around, it was impossible to take photographs through the glass. I said, "Comrades, we have to open the window." They protested, saying it would contaminate the helicopter. They knew what it was, the material rising up from the reactor.
But the window was opened. I leaned out with my camera, a wide-format Kiev-6, and a soldier held my legs to stop me falling. Then I doubled up with a Zenit.
When we returned I reported to the station director, Viktor Petrovich Bryukhanov, and he said, "Good, now do it from the ground."
I set off on foot with a radiation safety official and a dosimetrist. One of them shook his head. "Oi-oi-oi, we'll receive such a dose," he said. So we got into one of the fire engines left on the territory of the station and started it up. There was no room on the road, so we drove along the railway, bumping over the sleepers.
There were some graphite blocks lying on the ground near the third reactor. I jumped out and photographed them with the Zenit, leaving the other camera in the cabin. Then we drove up to within 50 metres of the ruins of fourth reactor. I took 12 pictures with each camera, and we returned the same way as we arrived, praying to God that the engine would keep going.
I develop the first film, from the Zenit, and it is black, completely burnt out by radiation - probably from the graphite block. I think, "That's it. It's all over." But the second film, from the other camera was successful, only slightly clouded. When I got to the station the First Department [KGB - Committee for State Security, CSS] took the prints, numbered them and took the films. "Everything you saw and heard - keep your mouth locked!" they said. From the photographs it was clear that the active zone was badly damaged. Until May, no-one else was allowed to take pictures.
When I returned home at midnight, I was vomiting. I was all red. I had a sore on my forehead which has remained unhealed for 20 years. A radiation burn. And my whole throat was burning, because I had been inhaling this soup of radionuclides.
Later, my job was to photograph the building of the sarcophagus. I took pictures from three sides of the reactor, and twice a week from above, in a military helicopter. This allowed the authorities to see how the sarcophagus was being built. September was the peak period, when the sarcophagus was nearing completion. In October I already began to feel bad. I went to work and an ambulance took me from there to hospital.
They wrote down that I had received an emergency dose, more than 25 roentgens. In January I was taken to the 6th clinic, in Moscow. There a doctor told me, "Anatoly Ivanovich, you do not count as a case of radiation sickness - to qualify for radiation sickness you need to have been working on the night shift." So I got no special benefits. But I have had lots of illnesses, including blood diseases and cancer. My health is ruined.
To begin with they did not publish my pictures. In May they showed one on central television, but it was one taken from the ground so the scale of the destruction was not visible. Later they showed one of the pictures taken from above, but they touched it up so that the ray of light emanating like a burning sun from the reactor, along with the smoke, ash and other flakes of material, was not visible.
Long afterwards they were published in a book called Chernobyl Reportage, but my name did not appear.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6177927.stm
A former staff photographer and graphic designer of Chernobyl nuclear power plant Anatoly Rasskazov with his wife Galina in their flat in Kiev, Thursday, April 20, 2006.
Anatoly and Galina came to their flat for several hours just from the oncological department of a hospital, where they undergo medical treatment from diseases caused by exposure to radiation during Chernobyl disaster. They both have lived in Pripyat and worked at Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Each of them has been receiving funds for medicaments from the government to the amount of 102 hryvnas (about 20 U.S. dollars) beginning from 2006, earlier they have received 26.80 hryvnas (about 5 U.S. dollars). Each year they have to buy the required medicaments to the sum of 1300 hryvnas (about 220 U.S. dollars) on this funds.
Rasskazov is the author of the first and only footage of Chernobyl reactor taken from a helicopter several hours after the explosion on April 26, 1986. A governmental commission, working in an underground shelter not far from the reactor, made conclusions about the scale of this disaster on the basis of Rasskazov's photography, in particular, whether the reactor core of the Unit 4 had been damaged. The printed photos were given to the commission on April 26, 1986, at 11:00 p.m. On the same day they were withdrawn by the Soviet security services. Two of these photos were printed only once in the photo album "Chernobyl report" in 1988. The author's name was not mentioned. The management of Chernobyl nuclear power plant returned some of these photos to Rasskazov a month ago.
Source: https://photo.unian.info/photo/35023
Anatoly and Galina married in 1972. In 1973 they had a daughter. In November of the same year, they moved to Pripyat and started working at Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Mid-seventies. Anatoly on the territory of Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The cooling pond behind him is not yet filled with water.
Anatoly Rasskazov draws a portrait of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev in his workshop in Pripyat before May holidays in 1982.
National Chornobyl Museum, 2021
On January, 16 would mark the 80th anniversary of the birth of Anatoly Rasskazov. He was a staff photographer of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. On April 26, 1986, Anatoly took the first photos of the 4th power unit destroyed by an explosion from the air and the ground.
"… It was difficult to see anything on the approach to the station through the porthole of the helicopter, - Anatoly told the POST CHERNOBYL newspaper many years later (№1 (25) 2006), - but I had to take pictures. I told this and asked to open the porthole, but the military man protested, citing the high levels of radiation, saying that everything would be contaminated with radionuclides. But the civilian gave the order to open the hatch. I told the military man to hold my legs so I wouldn't fall. So halfway out with the camera, I took a picture of the destroyed 4th power unit at a height of 200 meters, covering the equipment with my own body so that at least something came out…"
The widow of the courageous photographer Halyna Rasskazova remembered:
“... When my beloved husband returned home at night, I did not know what to do, where to run. The telephones were no longer working. He came all burgundy-brown, vomited, he staggered like a drunk. I asked: “Tolyusha, have you drunk?" To which he replied: "No, darling! I feel so bad, I am very sick." I dripped mint drops for him, but nothing helped. I had a bottle of birch buds in alcohol. I poured almost a glass of this tincture, topped up a little with water and gave him a drink. He drank and passed out, I just listened to him breathing...
And then there was the evacuation. The state commission, based on the photographs of my husband, finally decided to evacuate the city of Pripyat..."
Earlier Anatoliy Rasskazov repeatedly visited the National Museum "Chornobyl", took part in museum actions, and gave us a part of his photo archive, which depicts the birth, life and death of the Chernobyl NPP and of its satellite – the city of Pripyat. At the request of the museum scientist Anatoly wrote a brief autobiography. Here are some excerpts from it that relate to his work at a nuclear power plant before and after the accident:
"… At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, I worked as a photographer-artist from 1974 to 1986. Everything that was built on the industrial site of the nuclear power plant and the city of Pripyat was photographed. I was also engaged in visual agitation at the station and at the facilities related to it: slogans, posters, plaques. I also made cups, medals and more.
Since April 26, 1986, I was engaged in photographing the destroyed 4th block from the air and from the ground. Since June - worked as a dosimetrist of the IDС (individual dosimetric control), since July - again as a photographer-dosimetrist. Filmed the construction of the "Sarcophagus" over the destroyed 4th block, the dividing wall between the 3rd and 4th blocks, took pictures from constant shooting points along the perimeter.
Together with scientists, I photographed in the 4th microdistrict of the city of Pripyat their methods of decontamination of buildings (inside and outside), soil, trees, bushes. Filmed carrying out such works at school №4, kindergarten and dormitory of the radio plant.
In November 1986, I was removed from the zone of ionizing radiation for health reasons and dose load. For one year I worked in the civil defense of Kiev.
I was treated at the 6th Moscow clinic in 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990. In 1988, I was allowed to work with a dose limit of 0.1 rem and no night shifts. I worked as an OSG-750 (open switching gear) dosimetrist on duty until November 1988. Then I was transferred from the station to the ChNPP Construction Management. I was engaged in radiation safety control at the industrial site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and in the 10-kilometer zone. Conducted dosimetric control of everything that was built at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (burial grounds, a computer building, sanitary inspection rooms, and much more). In 1990, the 6th clinic finally forbade me to work in the zone of ionizing radiation. I was forced to resign."
The radiation dose received by Anatoliy was 190 rem. Of course, this undermined his health - he was seriously ill with oncology, in 1991 he was recognized as a disabled person of the III, and in 1996 - the II group. On February 17, 2010, he passed away.
Anatoly Ivanovich Rasskazov made an invaluable contribution to world photo-documentary with his unique photos of the initial period of liquidation of the consequences of the Chornobyl catastrophe. He left a good memory of the scientists of the National Museum "Chernobyl", who personally knew this very modest, courageous, talented, hard-working, responsible man.
Source: Facebook National Chornobyl Museum