#igor kostin

[henk-heijmans]

Dog with his boy, USSR, ca. 1975 - by Igor Kostin (1936 - 2015), Ukrainian

[moradadabeleza]

Igor Kostin

[francescacammisa1]

Lacrime

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Le lacrime che guariscono sono anche le lacrime che scottano e feriscono

Stephen King - Shining

Ph Igor Kostin

[decophotolove]

L’œil de Tchernobyl

[10xendtimes]

The only existing photo of Chernobyl the morning of the nuclear accident. The heavy grain is due to the radiation that destroyed the film the second it was exposed.

[alrauna]

© Igor Kostin, April 1986, Chernobyl disaster, Ukraine

A liquidator, clad in a gas mask and protective clothing, pushes a baby in a carriage who was found during the cleanup of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The infant had been left in an abandoned house in the village of Tatsenki; the worker found the child when he was measuring radiation levels.

The village is inside the exclusion zone, an area within a 19-mile (30 kilometer) radius of Chernobyl that remains abandoned today. About 116,000 people were evacuated in the spring and summer of 1986, and 220,000 more were relocated in subsequent years.

The people who lived near the plant were not informed of the accident until days after the explosion. Only when radiation detectors were set off at nuclear power plants in Europe did the world begin to learn what had happened in northern Ukraine.

[unscharf-an-den-raendern]

During one of my “reading random articles on Wikipedia” sprees, I came across the works of Igor Kostin, one of the five photographers in the world who took pictures of the Chernobyl Disaster in 1986.

This was one of the first pictures that was ever taken of the disaster, 14 hours after it happened. You may wonder why the quality is so bad. That’s due to the radiation. It was the only picture on the film that survived, every other one turned out black and the motor of his camera broke after 20 shots (which was also caused by the radiation).

These people are liquidators, civil and military personnel who worked in the contaminated areas. Here they are working on the roof, cleaning up the radioactive debris. Originally, they tried using west-German, Russian and Japanese robots, but they broke down after a few days. The radiation was so high, the workers could only stay on the roof for 40 seconds. A lot of them died or suffer from severe health problems. See those white stripes at the bottom of the picture? Also caused by the radiation.

This is another one of the liquidators. He’s pushing an abandoned baby they found while measuring radiations levels in the abandoned village of Tatsenski.

The village of Kopachi is buried as an experiment to try to reduce the spread of the radiation. Only a few buildings remained. The experiment failed. As it turned out, burying the houses only drove the radio-toxins deeper in the environment.

Contaminated apples in the exclusion zone, three years after the disaster.

[jayavant]

Order of the Truth

Igor Kostin - photographer who made the very first photo of the chernobyl disaster on the most advanced radiation. Tells how it was.

Extraordinary video. I wish I could understand Russian, but it’s quite clear what is gong on.