Ivan Popov

Ivan Vasilievich Popov (; 1874–1945) was a Yakut and Soviet artist, teacher, ethnographic photographer and iconographer, often called the first professional Yakut painter by his contemporaries.

Biography Popov was born in 1874

Between approximately 1910 and 1914, Popov conducted ethnographic expeditions across Yakutia and Buryatia for the ethnographic department of the Alexander III Museum (now the Russian Ethnographic Museum) and the Kunstkamera. There he photographed landscapes, everyday life, and local people in traditional dress; sketched household items; and collected silver, furs, pottery, toys, and shamanic costume elements. In 1914, he sent five crates containing 1,226 Yakut artifacts to ethnographic museums in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, and Frankfurt. Using a compact German camera, he shot in black-and-white and printed postcards of Yakutian views through the Moscow firm Scherer, Nabholz & Co. In 1914, Popov ceased photographing and his later years remain poorly documented. Popov is also known to have recorded Yakut oral history and folklore. His son Ivan also became an artist.