Anatoly Rasskazov

Anatoly Ivanovich Rasskazov (Анатолий Иванович Рассказов; circa 1944 – 2010) was a staff photographer and illustrator with the Soviet Chernobyl power station. He was the first person to photograph the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Documentation of Chernobyl disaster
On April 27, 1986, the day after the meltdown, he was given permission by authorities who wanted to determine what had occurred to photograph the scene from a helicopter. He was accompanied by two soldiers and two civilians from Atomenergo Moscow Advanced Training Institute. Rasskazov also took photos from the ground, shooting two rolls of film in total. The first roll of film was burnt out by the radiation. The second was only slightly damaged by the radiation. He also documented the building of the sarcophagus around the reactor. Most of his photos were never published. The ones that were chosen for reproduction were carefully chosen and/or edited to downplay the damage. Years later, they were published in a book without accreditation.

He suffered from burns and vomiting as early as after the first night and has had unhealed radiation burns on his forehead for the past twenty years. His continued work around the reactor during the clean-up contributed further to his radiation poisoning, which he has blamed for his "ruined" health, which has included "blood diseases and cancer. Rasskazov died in 2010, aged 66, after suffering for years from cancer and blood diseases that he blamed on the radiation."