Don Cossack Ivan Boldyrev: photographer and inventor

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Ivan Vasilyevich Boldyrev was born in 1850 on the Don, in the village of Ternovskaya, where the Cossacks had settled from time immemorial. His father was in the tsar's service for many years, and until the age of fifteen, the future photographer was considered almost an orphan, earning his bread by helping his grandfather herd cattle. Returning home, his father gave him to the service of an officer, in the hope that eventually his son would turn out to be a good clerk. But from early childhood Boldyrev was attracted by technology more than anything else. He, mesmerized, looked closely at how all kinds of mechanisms work. The pinnacle of technology then for him was a simple watch. Having mastered the craft of a watchmaker, he began to repair simple mechanisms for fellow villagers, which began to bring some income.

Having saved up a small amount of money, the 19-year-old boy left his native village and went to Novocherkassk. It was there that Ivan found his true calling - photography. The young man, having mastered the basics of a rare profession in those years, pretty soon began to perform the main types of photographic work quite professionally. Inspired by the success and results of his first photographs, the young man went to St. Petersburg in 1872.

His interest in photography led him to St. Petersburg, where he entered the service of Lorenz's photo studio, and then began to attend classes at the Academy of Arts as a volunteer, which he could not graduate from due to material difficulties. Life in the capital did not spoil him. Working as a retoucher and photographer's assistant, Ivan Boldyrev spent almost all of his earnings on expensive photographic materials and experiments to improve photography and photographic equipment. Therefore, his constant companions were need and poverty.

But nothing could extinguish the craving for knowledge. The need for self-education led him to the Imperial Public Library. In 1873 he met Vladimir Vasilyevich Stasov, who at that time was the head of the art department of the library, which received graphic works, Russian and foreign photographic publications. Stasov at that time was engaged in compiling a catalog of photographs stored in the library. The venerable art historian and art critic took an active part in the fate of a talented young photographer, whose talent he immediately noted. Stasov helped with orders, repeatedly recommending it to wealthy and sometimes famous customers. So, for example, a letter has survived in which Stasov wrote to P. M. Tretyakov: “… I beg you to allow us to take photos of our excellent photographer Yves. You. Boldyrev, known for his excellent photographs …"

Boldyrev himself, however, considered himself primarily an inventor. Unable to purchase and order expensive optics, he was forced to use homemade lenses. Day and night with enviable persistence struggled to create a universal short-focus lens. Studying the laws of optics and testing various combinations of glasses, Boldyrev achieved noticeable success. From several lenses, placed in a homemade cardboard frame, he got a simple but very successful lens that allowed him to get a pretty decent image.

Moreover, in some respects, the optical system he assembled was superior to the factory lenses that existed in those years. The angle of the image and the luminosity of the Boldyrev design were superior to the proprietary ones, only slightly inferior to them in image quality. On the recommendation of the V (photographic department) of the Imperial Russian Technical Society (IRTS), Boldyrev's photographic lens was tested in 1878 in A. Denier (Nevsky Prospect, 19) and showed an amazing result, "allowing for group portrait photography to convey not only linear, but also aerial perspective." However, experts from the department refused to send the inventor his "two-inch photographic lens" to the World Exhibition in Paris.

Obsessed with his innovative improvements in photographic technology, Boldyrev did not fully realize the significance of his work as a photographer, in which he clearly excelled. In one of his articles, he wrote with chagrin that he was given a Bronze Medal for photography at one of the exhibitions "while I exhibited not photographic works, but a device with accessories through which I took them." But even worse were the disappointments caused by the reluctance of the Russian Technical Society to recognize the authorship of I. V. Boldyrev on the invention of a short-focus lens, an instant shutter and a flexible "resinous tape", which he proposed to replace the breakable glass plates, which were widely used as a basis for applying a light-sensitive emulsion.

At that time, all negative material was made on the basis of glass. Glass is an excellent material for negatives, but it had two major drawbacks. The first is that glass is heavy. And when you go to shoot, especially if you need to take multiple shots, you carry a significant load on yourself. Therefore, photographers had to resort to the help of all kinds of assistants. But there was also a more significant drawback - the glass is fragile. And often already filmed material perished due to the slightest carelessness in the work. Boldyrev himself has repeatedly encountered similar situations.

At first, he tried to apply the emulsion to paper tape, so that later in the laboratory, transfer it to glass before copying, but this procedure turned out to be very painstaking and laborious. In addition, during the transfer process, the emulsion was transformed, which led to image distortion. It was necessary to find a light, flexible and transparent material for the base. In 1878 I. V. Boldyrev proposed a new type of photographic material - soft film. It possessed remarkable properties: "so elastic that neither rolling into a tube, nor squeezing into a ball can make it bend," - this is how the newspapers wrote about Boldyrev's invention at that time.

He spent many years defending the priority of the prototype of modern photographic film that he proposed, which he could not not only introduce into practice, but even obtain a patent for it, or, as they said, a privilege. The Russian craftsman did not manage to scrape together 15O rubles, which were required to register his invention. And at the same time, more precisely, two years later, overseas successful entrepreneur George Eastman founded his company "Eastman Kodak", which soon became famous all over the world, which used the material proposed by the Russian inventor in cameras.

In addition to all of the above, in 1889 Boldyrev designed an accurate instantaneous photo shutter for the lens, which at a meeting of the Imperial Russian Technical Society in 1889 was recognized as "the best of all commercially available".

With the help of his short-focus photo lens and instant shutter I. V. Boldyrev achieved "notable success in photographing the landscape from the window of a train car and portraits."

Stasov called many of Boldyrev's works "everyday paintings … as if created by a talented artist." Of the greatest interest is undoubtedly the collection of photographs taken by him in his homeland.

We are talking about the so-called "Donskoy Album" - a collection of photographs entitled "Types and types of the 2nd dragoon district, filmed in 1875-76". These are several dozen magnificent images taken by the photographer in the villages of Tsimlyanskaya, Kumshanskaya, Eeaulovskaya and other Cossack settlements, where he regularly visited in the summer.

These pictures are a genuine document telling about the life of the Don Cossacks, about their morals and customs. They were made by a person who knows all the intricacies of the life of the local population. I must say that his photographs are not a direct reportage, but subtle, unobtrusive arrangements made by a skillful director. Such are "Inspection of the Cossack units by the chieftain", "Seeing off the Cossacks to the service", "Cossack family on holidays" and other scenes from the everyday life of his fellow countrymen.

Before us there is a gallery of representatives of the Don Cossacks - loyal campaigners, often of a tough disposition, true to their customs and habits, who sharply value freedom. After all, it is not for nothing that the people called them so - "free Cossacks".

Boldyrev's Don photographs are a unique phenomenon in the history of Russian photography, interest in them has not waned for more than a century, and it is not only ethnographic, cognitive in nature. In these photographs, the uncommonness of the author's vision, the flair of the situation, the ability to give an accurate figurative description in a laconic pictorial form more and more clearly appears. In this sense, one can reasonably speak of Boldyrev as a great original artist who made a significant contribution to the development of Russian photography.

In 1879 V. V. Stasov, in order to preserve for posterity full information about the unique architectural monument - the Bakhchisarai Palace - invited Boldyrev to take photographs there. With interest and excitement, the photographer set to work. Apparently, in the Crimea, they reacted with understanding to his arrival. It is known that for three months, from October to December 1879 (according to other sources of 1880), he was engaged not only in photographing the palace, but also in the study of its most interesting premises. The Khan's Palace, a unique monument of Tatar architecture of the 15th-16th centuries, was still little studied by that time.

According to L. Goncharova, a researcher at the Bakhchisarai State Historical and Cultural Reserve, the result of Ivan Vasilyevich's curiosity and perseverance was the discovery of the original paintings on the walls of the Golden Cabinet, found under a layer of later painting. Realizing the significance of this discovery for historians-researchers and restorers, Boldyrev sketched the found ornaments and, upon his return from Bakhchisarai, transferred the drawings along with the photo album he had made to the Imperial Public Library, where they are kept to this day.

It must be said that the pictures he created are not just photographs of the external appearance of an architectural monument and its most interesting interiors, which in itself was not an easy task at that time. The imperfection of the negative material created many difficulties for obtaining a full-fledged image when shooting objects with high contrast, especially if the frame simultaneously contained fragments of interiors and the bright Crimean sky.

The photographer solves a difficult creative task - to show the palace surrounded by landscape, trying to convey the unique atmosphere of the place. To do this, he creates panoramic compositions in which he includes parts of architectural structures and orchards surrounding the palace.

In the summer of 2005, an exhibition of photographs of the Khan's Palace made by Boldyrev was opened in the Bakhchisarai State Historical and Cultural Reserve. The exposition features several dozen photographs. So the residents and guests of Crimea were able to see the palace with their own eyes and in photographs more than one hundred and twenty-five years ago. It is curious that the Crimean album of Boldyrev, which we described above, was made by a photographer, as it turned out, in six copies. One of them was presented to the palace-museum by the famous physician-balneologist native of Crimea and his passionate patriot Ivan Sarkizov-Serazini. In 1925, the then young scientist purchased this album from the Moscow Expert Fund, and in 1957 donated it to the Bakhchisarai Palace Museum.

The last years of I. V. Boldyrev are little documented. From the fragmentary information that has come down to us, it can be assumed that he continued to take pictures and tried to continue work on all sorts of improvements in the field of technology.

Vladimir Nikitin

Don Cossack thirty years old, from whom Ivan Vasilyevich Boldyrev recorded songs, 1875-1876

Cossack ninety years old, 1875-1876

Boy four years old on horseback, 1875-1876

Cossack matchmakers, 1875-1876

Cossack woman in a festive costume, 1875-1876

Old Cossack with his wife, 1875-1876

Maidens in cubicles. Donskoy smart costume, 1875-1876

Cossack family of the Tsymlyanskaya village. On the stairs is Ivan Vasilievich Boldyrev, 1875-1876.