by Lisa Rosenkranz

Created on: March 21, 2008

The sound of a telephone woke Igor Kostin from his sleep in the middle of the night on April 26 1986. Kostin was a photographer for the Novosti Press Agency, a Russian Information Agency located in Moscow. On the other end of the telephone was his friend, a helicopter pilot Kostin had grown close to in his photo journaling work, informing him that something very big had just happened at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near Pripyat in Ukraine.

Forty-five minutes later Kostin was hovering above the accident in a helicopter. "I suddenly saw the extent of the catastrophe, the burning, open reactor: an eerie, magical scene,'' recalls Kostin in an interview with Christine Daum. Kostin began to take photographs but after so many shots, every camera malfunctioned. Unable to continue his work they flew back to Kiev. (Daum)

During the return flight to Kiev, Kostin and his friend became ill. "On the way back all of a sudden my throat tightened. I felt queasy. I began to cough and had to throw up. It hadn't got anything to do with flying in the helicopter, I'd never had a problem with that," said Kostin. Another strange thing happened when the film was developed, only six exposures were on each roll. The rest had been blackened from the radiation. Kostin sent the photos to the news agency but the Soviet government's efforts to cover up the accident prohibited them from being published. (Daum)

Kostin returned to photograph the men who risked their lives to clean up the debris. At first, robots were used but the radiation caused them to break down instantly, so they sent in men, called Liquidators to do the work. Each man was only allowed to work on the reactor roof for forty seconds, shoveling one load into the burning reactor pit. The workers left the roof at the sound of an alarm, collected one hundred rubles, a few words of thanks and were sent away. In the end, the robots had been given the credit. Every person who went up on the roof was given a certificate, along with receiving lethal doses of radiation. Igor Kostin had been given five certificates. (Daum)

Kostin's career as a photographer started late in life. The hardships of his childhood led him to a life crime on the streets and he ended up being sentenced to military duty, digging trenches along the Soviet boarder. He was discharged from the army in 1959, briefly pursuing a career in both athletics and engineering. By the mid seventies Kostin grew tired of his profession as an engineer and began to dabble

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