Ivan Vass­i­lye­vich Boldyrev (1850 — after 1917) is known to his­to­ri­ans for his keen in­ter­est in the tech­ni­cal de­vel­op­ment of pho­tog­ra­phy and his in­ven­tions in the field. Treated by con­tem­po­raries quite am­bigu­ously, Boldyrev's in­ven­tions, ac­cord­ing to a de­tailed list in this brochure pub­lished in 1883 in­clude a self made lens and an "im­proved cam­era, quite light, with fix­tures" and "resinoid film", pro­to­type of con­tem­po­rary pho­to­graphic film. And al­though Boldyrev's in­ven­tions were pre­sented at the Pan-Russ­ian Art and In­dus­try Ex­hi­bi­tion in Moscow in 1882 and were no­ticed both by var­i­ous bu­reau­cratic in­sti­tu­tions and out­stand­ing sci­en­tists in­clud­ing Dmitry Mendeleyev, they did not ap­pear to be of in­ter­est to na­tional man­u­fac­tur­ers. The fate of Boldyrev's in­ven­tions was not very lucky, most likely be­cause of the neg­a­tive treat­ment they re­ceived from the mem­bers of the high­I­ron­i­cally, Boldyrev's own writ­ings in­di­cate that he per­ceived his works pri­mar­ily as a means of demon­stra­tion of yet an­other in­ven­tion or tech­ni­cal skill. His ex­tra­or­di­nary tal­ent for com­po­si­tion no­tice­able in Bakhchis­aray palace or in the se­ries on St.​Peters­burg hos­pi­tals from late 1880-ies, was some­thing of a mat­ter-of-course for him. One can only mar­vel at this strange in­dif­fer­ence or con­sider it char­ac­ter­is­tic for great artists of our times. Nev­er­the­less, he was right to say, "my work was not in vain".

Pho­tog­ra­pher and in­ven­tor Ivan Vass­i­lye­vich Bold­eyrev was born on 9 Sep­tem­ber 1850 into a poor Cos­sack fam­ily in Ter­novskaya vil­lage of Tsimlyansk dis­trict, Ros­tov re­gion. Boldyrev later said that he had learned read­ing and whit­ing quite late. Ini­tially des­tined to ob­tain a clerk's po­si­tion, Boldyrev even­tu­ally chose an­other way. As he would later ex­plain, "being since young age in­ter­ested in mas­ter­ship I de­cided to learn pho­tog­ra­phy as it could pro­vide for my liv­ing and give me ac­cess to other cities".

In 1870, Boldyrev made his first in­ven­tion, the "uni­ver­sal lens" which he used in his early por­trait shoot­ings (artists of Novocherkassk the­atre). Two years later Boldyrev de­cided to move to St.​Peters­burg. In the cap­i­tal, he worked as pho­tog­ra­pher as­sis­tant and re­toucher in the stu­dio of the well known por­trait and land­scape pho­tog­ra­pher Al­fred Lorens, and at­tended draw­ing classes at the So­ci­ety for En­cour­age­ment of Artists. In 1874 Boldyrev was ad­mit­ted to the Acad­emy of Arts as non-credit stu­dent.

In 1875–1877 Boldyrev cre­ated pho­tographs that be­came part of se­ries en­ti­tled Views and Types of Sec­ond Don Dis­trict ded­i­cated to his lands­men, prob­a­bly his main char­ac­ters.

Since 1878, Boldyrev worked reg­u­larly at the Im­pe­r­ial Pub­lic Li­brary pho­tograph­ing in­te­ri­ors and cre­at­ing por­traits of sci­en­tists, in­clud­ing Vladimir Vass­i­lye­vich Stasov who highly ranked Boldyrev's skills. In 1880 the critic ini­ti­ated Boldyrev's trips to Crimea for the shoot­ings of Bakhchis­aray palace, the mon­u­ment of ar­chi­tec­ture.

Boldyrev ex­hib­ited his works for sev­eral years, from 1878 to 1883, all the time seek­ing to ob­tain the ap­proval for his tech­ni­cal in­ven­tions from the mem­bers of Pho­tog­ra­phy de­part­ment at the Im­pe­r­ial Russ­ian Tech­ni­cal So­ci­ety. In spite of some use­ful ex­per­i­ments, these at­tempts were not suc­cess­ful.

In 1882, Boldyrev ex­hib­ited at the Pan-Russ­ian Art and In­dus­try Ex­hi­bi­tion in Moscow about 50 of his pho­tographs and one of his most in­ter­est­ing in­ven­tions, resinoid film. He was awarded the bronze medal for "pho­to­graphic im­ages made using spe­cial meth­ods in­vented by the au­thor".

In 1885, Boldyrev took part in the In­ter­na­tional Ex­hi­bi­tion of In­ven­tions and De­vel­op­ment in Lon­don.

The fate of Boldyrev's in­ven­tions, and of the au­thor him­self, was not lucky. His pub­lic ex­pe­ri­ence in 1885 on use of resinoid film has been re­ceived well but it proved not fea­si­ble for Boldyrev to make fur­ther pro­mo­tion of his ideas with­out fi­nan­cial sup­port.

How­ever, it would be wrong to con­sider him a fail­ure. Be­side the works al­ready men­tioned here, one should not for­get Boldyrev's ar­tis­ti­cally done album Pho­tographs from Na­ture (1874-1880). Boldyrev's 1880s pho­tographs of I. S. Koshkin's an­thracite mine are an in­ter­est­ing ex­am­ple of early Russ­ian in­dus­trial pho­tographs made at low light con­di­tions. He is also the au­thor of a se­ries shot in late 1880s and ded­i­cated to the work of out­stand­ing St. Pe­ters­burg physi­cians, S. P. Botkin, N. I. Sokolov and their col­leagues.

In 1888, Boldyrev's works were ex­hib­ited at the First Pho­tog­ra­phy Ex­hi­bi­tion. The pho­tog­ra­pher re­ceived an hon­or­able men­tion from the Im­pe­r­ial Russ­ian Tech­ni­cal So­ci­ety "for the pho­tographs of ar­tis­ti­cally com­piled scenes with use of ar­ti­fi­cial light­ing". Ten years later was prob­a­bly the last time that Boldyrev ex­hib­ited his works be­fore Russ­ian au­di­ence, at the Fifth Pho­tog­ra­phy Ex­hi­bi­tion. In­for­ma­tion of his fur­ther fate is sparse, his life only trace­able until 1917.

Ivan Boldyrev's photo stu­dio ad­dresses in the years 1905 and 1906 are known as 44 Nevsky Prospect and 19 Vladimirsky Prospekt, cor­re­spond­ingly.

The ex­hi­bi­tion in ROSPHOTO shows Boldyrev's major se­ries, cy­cles and al­bums: Views and Types of the Sec­ond Don Re­gion (1875–1877), in­door por­traits from the Pho­tographs from Na­ture album, Out­door and In­door Views Taken with Ar­ti­fi­cial Light­ing by Ivan Boldyrev of I. S. Koshkin's An­thracite Mine, along with im­ages il­lus­trat­ing the au­thor's re­search in tak­ing pho­tographs with ar­ti­fi­cial light­ing pro­vided by kerosene lamps and can­dles, a se­ries of por­traits of St. Pe­ters­burg fig­ures of cul­ture and a se­ries ded­i­cated to the work of dis­tin­guished St.​Peters­burg physi­cians S. P. Botkin and N. I. Sokolov.

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