Igor Fyodorovich Kostin

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Igor Fjodorowitsch Kostin (born December 27, 1936 in Chișinău , Greater Romania ; † June 9, 2015 near Kiev , Ukraine ) was a Moldovan- Ukrainian photographer and journalist .

Life

Igor Kostin was born as the son of the bank employee Fyodor Kostin and his wife Nadezhda Popowitsch in Chișinău, which was then part of Romania (now the Republic of Moldova). When the father was later drafted into the army of the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) for military service , the mother had to look after the son on her own. Since the self-employed activity carried out by his mother was suppressed by the Soviet authorities, Kostin lived partly in illegality.

In 1954 Kostin was drafted into the military and worked there as a sapper . During his military service, he was sentenced to prison for illicit absenteeism. Previously, the order to dig trenches along the Soviet border to stop a US invasion believed possible during the Cold War aroused his displeasure.

After his release, he began to play volleyball, making it up to the captain of the national team of the MSSR, which was later integrated into the Soviet national team, and took part in international tournaments. In 1969 he had to end his sports career due to orthopedic problems. He began studying at the Agricultural Institute in Chișinău, where he worked for several years as an engineer and as a senior engineer in a company in Kiev . In the 1970s, Kostin increasingly lost interest in this profession, especially since he hated the low pay. He decided to become a photographer.

As an amateur photographer, he won several awards and received more than twice as much salary, but continued to work as an engineer. He was given the opportunity to set up his own television program on photography on Ukrainian television, but it was canceled after a year and a half. From then on he worked as a reporter for the RIA Novosti news agency , first in Moscow, then in Kiev. He finally ended his activity as an engineer and reported as a reporter about the Vietnam War and the Soviet-Afghan War . On June 9, 2015, he was killed in a car accident near Kiev.

The Chernobyl disaster

After he returned from Afghanistan, Kostin was used almost exclusively in the Soviet interior. Just a few hours after the Chernobyl disaster , he was told about the accident by a helicopter pilot friend, he flew to the scene of the accident and took the first photo from his friend's helicopter. In an interview with the NDR- Kulturjournal he later said: “It was a magical picture: the fire down there and everything as quiet as in the cemetery, because of the earplugs against the helicopter noise. I took my camera. I didn't know what I was doing. I opened the helicopter door and took photos. We were 50 meters above the reactor. I took 20, 30 pictures with the auto shutter. Then the camera failed. I took another one. She also stopped after five or six pictures. One camera after the other broke. ”Only one image survived the radioactive radiation .

Kostin first documented the work of the first so-called liquidators who were ordered to the roof of the neighboring reactor building, threw down a shovel of rubble and came running back again. “The pictures of the liquidators are my absolute favorite shots. They did the dirty work and nobody is talking about them. That's why my pictures should set a monument to them. ”He himself was“ up there ”five times. He then also photographed people in and around the so-called death zone and in hospitals such as Moscow Radiation Clinic No. 6, deformed animals and deserted landscapes, villages and cities. That year he suffered a multiple fatal dose of radioactive radiation and since then has had to be hospitalized in a Moscow hospital for two months every year. Nevertheless, he continued to photograph the consequences of the disaster.

Due to the prevailing censorship and the news blackout declared after the accident, his pictures were initially not allowed to be published. It was not until May 5, 1986, when, as a journalist, one of the few accredited Soviet media outlets, received official access authorization for the affected area, that he was allowed to stay there legally.

Kostin has worked for Time , Newsweek , Paris Match , Liberation and Stern magazines . He was married to his wife Alla, an engineer, and lived in Kiev.

Services

Igor Kostin is considered to be the documenter of the Chernobyl disaster. It is his merit to have documented this first major accident in a nuclear power plant as a warning for posterity regardless of his own health, as he wants his work to be understood himself: “My photos show the story, but they are also like one Instructions for use for the next generation. "

Awards

In 1986 his picture series about Chernobyl won first prize for the press photo of the year in the category "Science & Technology stories" by World Press Photo . In 1989 another picture received an honorary award in the "Nature stories" category.

Works

Trivia

Kilian Leypold dedicated his radio play Black Dog. Weißes Gras, a Bayerischer Rundfunk production from 2011 that takes up elements from Tarkowski's film Stalker , by the photographer Igor Kostin.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chernobyl photographer Igor Kostin dies at age 78, The Guardian June 10, 2015, last accessed May 6, 2016
  2. ^ Igor Kostin photographe , last accessed on March 18, 2011 (French). According to a report in the St. Galler Tagblatt by Susan Boos ( "Der geborgte Heldenruhm" ) on April 27, 2006, last accessed on July 8, 2011, it was the company photographer Anatoli Rasskasow who took the first pictures.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Recommended book for the Kulturjournal program: “The Chernobyl Photographer”, NDR, March 14, 2011
  4. ↑ World Press Photo: 1986, Igor Kostin, 1st prize, Science & Technology stories , last accessed on May 6, 2016. Further nominated photos of him can be found on the right-hand side of the page. (English)
  5. ↑ World Press Photo: 1989, Igor Kostin, Honorable mention, Nature stories , last accessed on May 6, 2016. Also here on the right are other nominated photos of him. (English)
  6. ↑ Review by Perlentaucher
  7. ↑ Original broadcast on April 29, 2011, 8.30 p.m. in Bavaria 2
personal data
SURNAME Kostin, Igor Fyodorovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kostine, Igor Fedorowitsch; Kostine, Igor Fédorovitch (French); Kostine, Igor (French); Kostin, Igor Fedorovich (Spanish)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ukrainian photographer and reporter
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Chișinău , Greater Romania
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 2015
Place of death Kiev , Ukraine