Boris Mikhailov's large photo series meandered between clownish wit, grotesque eroticism and subversive poetry. Today, the Ukrainian photographer is considered one of the most respected artists of the former Soviet Union and is internationally recognised.
(...) Continue readingBoris Mikhailov - quietly resistance with his camera
Boris Mikhailov was born on 25th August 1938 in Kharkov in the Ukraine (then the Soviet Union). As the son of an engineering couple, he grew up in comfortable circumstances and was able to study electrical engineering at Kharkov Technical University, graduating as an engineer in 1962. After working temporarily for the municipal transport company, he worked in rocket construction from 1963 to 1968. His superiors gave him a camera to document the work processes in the state factory and Mikhailov began to learn photography as an autodidact, taking his first pictures for early series such as Susi and the others. When he was caught developing nude photos of his wife, he was interrogated by the KGB and dismissed on charges of pornography. Boris Mikhailov soon found a new position as an engineer, continued to photograph in his spare time, and documented everyday life in the Soviet Union in a way that could certainly be seen as subversive.
Provocative images between poetry, eroticism and humour
With his early pictures, Boris Mikhailov belonged to the first generation of the Kharkiv School of Photography, but barely had the chance initially to present his work at exhibitions and therefore compiled it into books. His photographs first attracted attention abroad, but he had a difficult time in the Soviet Union until the 1990s, and in 1994, he was arrested for presenting nude photographs of himself in a gallery. That same year, however, a scholarship from Syracuse University enabled him to spend time in New York, and two years later a further scholarship took him to Germany for the first time. From 1996 to 1997, he received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and lived in Berlin, which became a second home to him. His photo series fluctuated between craziness, poetry and eroticism, he experimented with double exposures, painted over his pictures with coloured pencils, or inscribed them with words. For the series I am not me (1992), he photographed himself naked with a dildo and enema.
One of the most important artists of the former Soviet Union
Boris Mikhailov achieved great international fame through the pictures he took of the lower classes of the disintegrated empire after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1990s. The Case History series (1997-1999) comprised 400 pictures, but also earned him the accusation that he had exploited the fate of the poor for his own purposes. Despite these accusations, Boris Mikhailov is now regarded as one of the most important artists of the former Soviet Union and his work is represented in the world's major galleries and museums. Boris Mikhailov has received prizes and awards for his art, including the Albert Renger Patzsch Prize from the Dietrich Oppenberg Foundation in 1997, the Hasselblad Foundation Award in 2000, the Goslar Kaiserring in 2015 and the Taras Shevchenko Prize in 2021. He has been a member of the Visual Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin since 2008.
Boris Mikhailov lives and works in Charkov and Berlin.
Boris Mikhailov - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
