Boris Mikhailov is a photographer who has treated Ukraine, from the late Soviet to the post-Soviet era, through hand-coloring, appropriation, performance, the depiction of the body, and a coarse photographic form. This page sets out his method of returning, rather than a transparent record of society, the ideology, shame, desire, and poverty carried by photography back to the viewer.
Mikhailov does not make photography a clean testimony. The point of this page is that, by breaking the forms of “correct” photography, he summoned social collapse and the viewer’s desire onto the same image.
This site does not display work images. Please see the official, museum, and publisher resources below.
Contents · Table of Contents
Destabilizing the “correctness” of the photograph
From early on he combined hand-coloring, superimposition, the appropriation of everyday photographs, performance, and text, estranging Soviet images of happiness and heroism*2.
Case History and the ethics of the viewer
MoMA introduces Case History as a series dealing with the harsh circumstances of people made homeless after the collapse of the Soviet Union*1.
Not erasing the body, poverty, or the transactional relationship
In this series, the subjects’ bodies, clothing, poses, nakedness, wounds, and their relationship with the photographer destabilize the very act of looking at the photographs*1.
Mikhailov is treated as a central artist who internationally repositions the contemporary photography of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet sphere*3.
This page places him not within the account of an artist who merely photographed harsh reality, but as one who showed that the form of photography is itself political*2.