A person in the history of Navahradak. Part 1. Jan Komar

Jan Komar is one of the oldest amateur photographers in Belarus. He was born in 1920 and lived almost all his entire life in the village of Nyankawa, Navahradak region. His parents were ordinary villagers - Ignat Parfyanovič and Olimpiada Klimentyevna from the village of Nyankawa. He finished four classes in a village school (firstly he went to a Polish school), and after little Jan went to a Belarusian school in Lyubča. His parents sent him as an apprentice to a tailor from the neighboring village of Rakevičy, where he learned sewing craft.

In 1944, Jan Ignatavič was mobilized into the Soviet Army. He was immediately sent to Ukraine, then to the reserve of a regiment stationed in the town of Ovruch. Later, he was sent as a marksman in anti-tank weapons squad to fight in Hungary. There he was injured. Jan Ignatavič met the victory in Austria. The war ended, but the future photographer was demobilized only in 1946. Jan Ignatavič returned to his native village on foot from Austria with a splinter in his leg. At first, he worked on a collective farm, and later he sewed men's clothes in factories in the villages of Nyankawa and Pantusavičy.

Jan Ignatavič started dreaming about the profession of a photographer at the age of 14 when a local photographer Sava Siūko came to their school and inspired the young boy to study photography. Jan Ignatavič was able to buy his first camera only in 1958. He paid his two-month salary for a brand new small-format "Zenith-C", with which he did not part for 50 years. At first, Jan Ignatavič's wife was dissatisfied with the purchase of such an expensive thing. But later she often took photos of her husband and her husband took photos of her.

There are more than two thousand negatives in Jan Ignatavič's archive. He used black and white films, he developed films by himself and went to print the negatives to the town.

Jan Ignatavič created a unique photo chronicle of the life of the village of Nyankawa. There is no such visual chronicle about any other village in Belarus. After studying special literature, Jan Ignatavič began to take photos of his relatives, friends, and acquaintances, took photos for documents, portraits of his fellow villagers - adults and children, he took photos of everyday life of villagers, on holidays and weekdays; construction of houses, various agricultural works, holidays - none of the everyday village events was possible without a local photographer.

And so Jan Ignatavič kept writing the chronicle of the village for all his life, he wrote down in his notebook the main events of the village: who was born, who got married, who died; he recorded each film, described what was shot in a particular frame, he marked a year, a film number, a shutter speed/light. And so he kept noting frame by frame - year after year.

An interesting fact is that Jan Ignatavič had already taken a "selfie" when it was not mainstream yet.

And even being 100 years old, Jan Ignatavič does not part with photography. He only changed his old "Zenith-C" to a digital camera and a smartphone.

You can also get acquainted with a short film dedicated to the photographer. The film was shot in 2019 by Andrei Voskresensky and written by Albert Tsekhanovich

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