“Everything his camera captured turned into a masterpiece.” Renowned photographer Anatol Kliashchuk passes away

Ana­tol Kliashchuk began tak­ing pho­tos in his younger years, inspired by his father.

He remem­bered the time in an inter­view, say­ing: “My dad had a cam­era, but he didn’t always let us use it. I joined the school pho­to club and took pic­tures of school events, dogs, and cats. Back then, non-pros only used one or two rolls of film per year. We’d pull out their cam­era when neigh­bors or fam­i­ly got togeth­er, and group pho­tos were a must at such events. One day, on March 8^th, my fam­i­ly and I went sled­ding down­hill and had to cross a field. We were sur­prised to see two moose stand­ing in the field. My dad hur­ried clos­er to snap pic­tures of them, which were lat­er print­ed in the local Slut­sk news­pa­per. It was a big event.”

After his time in the army, pho­tog­ra­phy became some­thing more impor­tant. While in jour­nal­ism school, he spent the whole week­end con­stant­ly tak­ing pic­tures. “I got lucky and bought a hard-to-find Zenit‑E cam­era for a hun­dred bucks, which was a big deal at the time. Choos­ing between jeans and a cam­era was a no-brain­er for me.”

After­ward, he became even more enthu­si­as­tic. You might remem­ber see­ing his pic­tures of the floods in Palesye. Ana­tol Kliashchuk also doc­u­ment­ed the after­math of the Chornobyl dis­as­ter.

“I start­ed talk­ing to peo­ple and lis­ten­ing about their trou­bles and prob­lems,” said the pho­tog­ra­ph­er. “Most of them didn’t expect me to help, they just want­ed some­one to lis­ten. They were often too sick to receive vis­i­tors, and some had come to Min­sk from far­away vil­lages. Maybe they trust­ed me, but I’m not sure. Some­times I knew when it was time to leave.”

After that, Ana­tol Kliashchuk head­ed to the coun­try­side – to cap­ture sim­ple peo­ple and the beau­ty of the nat­ur­al land­scapes. Every­thing cap­tured by his cam­era lens became a stand­alone mas­ter­piece. His vision was pro­found, and his work as a pho­to­jour­nal­ist was unfor­get­table.

He has released numer­ous books and albums. He has also orga­nized over 30 per­son­al exhi­bi­tions.

“Klyashchuk intro­duced us to a fresh per­spec­tive of our cities, show­cas­ing his beloved home­town Davyd-Haradok and pho­tograph­ing its unique archi­tec­ture, includ­ing sun-shaped house plaques, oak boats, tick­et booths, murals, and the Koni­ki cel­e­bra­tion. He lat­er com­piled these pho­tos in an album ded­i­cat­ed to Davyd-Haradok, which he co-cre­at­ed with his friend, poet Leanid Dranko-May­siuk,” writer Vasil Dranko-May­siuk shared on Face­book.

He’s report­ed­ly been sick late­ly. How­ev­er, up until recent­ly, Ana­tol Kliashchuk’s pho­tos were still being fea­tured in the Zvi­az­da news­pa­per, which he’d remained loy­al to for decades. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er was 65 years old.

A good­bye cer­e­mo­ny for Ana­tol Kliashchuk is sched­uled to take place on Sep­tem­ber 6 in Min­sk.

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