“Every portrait is not only about the person in front of me,” says Yakov Nazarov. “It is also about time, and about us.”
For Nazarov, now in his eighties, art has never been about chasing trends or technologies. He still prefers his old camera to the sleekest digital models. What matters, he insists, is the gaze — the way you look at the world, and the honesty with which you show it.
Born in Baku in 1942, Nazarov did not begin as an artist. He trained as a chemical engineer, graduated from the Baku Industrial Institute in 1964, and seemed destined for a scientific career. But in 1966 he picked up a camera, and nothing was the same. A few years later, he entered VGIK, the legendary Moscow film school, where he studied directing. By the mid-1970s, he was making documentaries for Lennauchfilm — beginning a journey that would carry him far beyond the Soviet Union.
Circus, 1977
Over the decades, Nazarov created more than seventy films, many of them portraits of Russian cultural figures. They are not simply biographies, but intimate encounters. His 1989 film One-on-One with Time, about artist Solomon Rossine, was purchased by the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His Russian Captivity (1995) won awards both in Russia and Germany for its haunting look at war and memory.
Parallel to cinema, Nazarov built a life in photography. His albums My Moscow (1987), Album of Photographs (2006), and Odessa (2020) map cities with a poetic eye — attentive to small details, open courtyards, fleeting gestures. His exhibitions, often combining photography, pastels, and drawings, blur the boundaries between genres. The Yaroslavl Art Museum even acquired his pastel portrait Burning Notes of pianist Maria Yudina.
Paper Dove, 1984
Friends and critics describe Nazarov as a chronicler of culture, someone who captures not just people but the atmosphere of an era. “He sees the soul of the subject,” one colleague said, “but he also sees the time they live in.”
Today, still living and working in Moscow, Nazarov remains active. His 2016 book My Own Path felt like a summing-up of his artistic journey, but the man himself resists endings. With quiet persistence, he continues to work, always searching for the next image, the next story.
Theme and Variations, 2020
Mother. Kursk.USSR, 1978
And when asked what keeps him going after so many years, he smiles: “Curiosity. As long as you’re curious, you’re alive.”
