Yaroslav Koval

Yaroslav Koval (Ukrainian: Ярослав Ількович Коваль; 16 December 1908 – 24 June 1997) was a Ukrainian photographer, member of the Ukrainian Photographic Society and the editorial board of the "Svitlo i Tin" magazine, poet, local historian, collector, initiator and co-founder of the Museum of Boykivshchyna culture and life in Tsineva.

Yaroslav Koval was born on 16 December 1908 in Tsineva, Boikivshchyna, to Ilko and Kateryna Koval. The family was wealthy and had 5 children. The father of the future artist was a village blacksmith, he had a shop, an apiary, and a dairy. His mother Kateryna, before her marriage Komar, came from a family of master furriers. It was she who instilled in Yaroslav a love of folklore, encouraged him to collect and research. His paternal grandfather was a sculptor and stonemason.

Yaroslav Koval finished primary school in his native village. After one of the battles of the World War I, which took place on the outskirts of the village, Yaroslav's older brother found a carbine, which was later exchanged for a trophy camera "ideal-222" from Zeiss. This is how the future artist's family got their first camera. An engineer, Venedykt Stasiv, who lived in the Kovalivs' house, began to show Yaroslav the technology of photography.

In 1918, Yaroslav Koval and his brother Volodymyr entered the Ukrainian private classical gymnasium named after Markiian Shashkevych in Dolyna to continue their studies. In 1924, the gymnasium in Dolyna was disbanded, and Yaroslav continued his studies at the Rohatyn Gymnasium, while Volodymyr went to the Academic Gymnasium in Lviv. The headmaster of the school in Rohatyn was Antin Krushelnytskyi, and later Mykola Chaikovskyi, the son of Andrii Chaikovskyi. Studying at the gymnasium also contributed to the opportunity to communicate with a whole host of other figures, including Osyp Turianskyi, Mykola Uhryn-Bezhrishnyi, Roman Hrytsai, Borys Kudryk, and Yulian Kamenetskyi. The latter, as a professor of history, organized an anti-alcohol movement among the Plast members of the gymnasium, in which Yaroslav Koval took an active part. Mykola Chaikovskyi, in turn, led a photography club at the gymnasium, which also helped to develop Koval's creative genius.

In 1930, having already tried his hand at photography, Yaroslav Koval became a student at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Lviv. Here he enrolled in the photography elective of Józef Światkowski. While studying at the university, he continues to take an active part in the anti-alcohol campaign, making exhibits for Ivan Rakovskyi First Ukrainian Traveling Anti-Alcohol Exhibition. The exhibition was presented in 1932 in the premises of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and received positive reviews, including from Ilarion Svientsitskyi, who eventually provided the premises for a permanent anti-alcohol exhibition at the National Museum of Lviv.

After graduating from university in 1934, Yaroslav Koval opened a photography studio in Rozhniativ. Here he launched an active "marketing" activity to popularize photography among the local peasantry, printing 5000 witty "from life" ads: "Anna Rabutska from Kamen. She received a kind gentleman from Podillia who wrote to her: "Send me a photo, Annychka". She didn't send it, but other girls found out and sent their photos, and now there will be a wedding because the groom liked one of them. And Anna is crying because she wants to give herself up. And she blames herself for not taking pictures".

But he does not work exclusively in the studio. He travels a lot with his camera around the neighborhood, photographs local residents in their usual environment, visits Pisliute, where the UGCC metropolitans lived, and photographs Andrei Sheptytskyi and his distinguished guests. Among the heritage of this period are portraits of Oleksa Novakivskyi, Olha Duchyminska, Iryna Vilde, and Roman Selskyi.

In 1939, when Soviet power came to western Ukraine, Yaroslav Koval, along with Roman Kurbas (Les Kurbas's grandfather), was arrested and held in Dolyna. But soon they were released and the artist had no choice but to work as a photographer for documents and as an artist of communist slogans.

In 1941, fleeing deportation to Germany, he accepted the help of a school friend and, knowing Greek and Latin from university, got a job as a laboratory assistant in a pharmacy in Rozhniativ.

Shortly before the return of Bolshevik control of Stanyslavshchyna, Yaroslav's first wife, a Pole, suggested that they immigrate to her historical homeland, but the photographer did not support this idea. When Rozhniativ found himself behind the lines of the Red Army in 1944, the new government first promoted Koval to head of the pharmacy, and after completing the inventory on 7 August 1944, he was taken into custody.

First, he was tortured in Rozhniativ Castle, and then taken to Stanyslaviv, where the Stanyslaviv military tribunal of the NKVD sentenced him to death for "collaboration with the OUN and high treason". It is worth noting that Yaroslav Koval never told anyone (even after Ukraine gained independence) to participate in the armed resistance movement. However, he spent 39 days on death row awaiting execution.

After 39 days, it was announced that the death sentence had been revised by the frontline commander and replaced with 25 years of hard labor. Yaroslav Koval was transferred to Vorkuta, where he was assigned the hard labor number 0-712. He served 11 years of hard labor, worked in a mine, and then was released due to the relaxation that occurred after Stalin's death.

He returned to his native village in 1955. He was denied a residence permit and worked as a collective farm photographer. He created satirical wall newspapers, received certificates and diplomas for winning competitions.

In 1961, he married Iryna Horbenko, a Lviv theater critic, but for another 17 years he could not get a residence permit in Lviv and lived in Dobrotvir.

In 1962, an exhibition of Yaroslav Koval's photographs was held in Lviv, featuring a hundred of his works. In 1987, the Museum of Photographic Art hosted the exhibition "60 Years with a Camera", which received favorable reviews in the press.

After 1991, Yaroslav Koval became actively involved in the development of photography in the young state of Ukraine, was a member of the editorial board of the revived almanac "Svitlo i Tin", where he regularly published his articles, and participated in meetings of the Lviv Photo Club. In the early 1990s, exhibitions of Koval's photographs dedicated to Metropolitan Sheptytskyi were held in Kyiv, the United States, and Canada, and in 1996 the artist published a book, "Hospodar Perehinskoi Pushchi", dedicated to the Metropolitan.

Yaroslav Koval died on 24 June 1997 in Lviv. He was buried in Tsineva, near his mother. On the grave there is a tombstone in the form of an improvised camera.

• Koval Yaroslav Ilkovych / V. I. Horyn // Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine [Online] / Eds. : I. М. Dziuba, A. I. Zhukovsky, M. H. Zhelezniak [et al.] ; National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Shevchenko Scientific Society. – Kyiv : The NASU institute of Encyclopedic Research, 2013.
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• Світлини Ярослава Коваля
• Журнал «Наше Життя» жовтень 1981 (Див. сторінку 6)
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• Підлюте і околиці у світлинах Ярослава Коваля