Anatoly Ivanovich Rasskazov (Russian: Анатолий Иванович Рассказов; 16 January 1941 – 17 February 2010) was a staff photographer and illustrator at the Soviet Chernobyl power station.
[3] On 26 April 1986, in the morning after the meltdown, he was sent by plant authorities, who gathered in a bunker and wanted to determine what had occurred, to photograph the scene from a helicopter.
Back to the bunker, Rasskazov was ordered by Viktor Petrovich Bryukhanov, the plant director, to also take photos from the ground, shooting two rolls of film in total.
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.
[1] Rasskazov died on 17 February 2010,[4] "after suffering for years from cancer and blood diseases that he blamed on the radiation".