Name Boris Mikhailov Role Photographer | ||
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Books Yesterday's Sandwich Born 25 August 1938 (age 85 years), Kharkiv, Ukraine Nationality Ukrainian Similar Rafail Levitsky, Evgeny Chernikin, Nikolay Andreyev (photographer) | ||
Boris mikhailov photography was a way out tateshots
Borys Andriyovych Mykhailov (Бори́с Андрі́йович Миха́йлов, born 25 August 1938) is a photographer who has been described as "one of the most important artists to have emerged from the former USSR."
Contents
- Boris mikhailov photography was a way out tateshots
- Boris mikhailov case history photography internal fusion la forme de l epee
- Life and work
- Publications
- Selected solo exhibitions
- Selected collective exhibitions
- Awards
- References
Boris mikhailov case history photography internal fusion la forme de l epee
Life and work
Born in the former Soviet Union, Mykhailov lived and worked for several decades in his hometown of Kharkiv, Ukraine. He received an education as an engineer and started to teach himself photography. Today he is one of the most successful and well-known among the photographers who were already active in the Soviet era. His work combines conceptual art and social documentary photography.
Mykhailov had his first exhibition at the end of the 1960s. After the KGB found nude pictures of his wife he was laid off his job as an engineer and started to work full-time as a photographer. Between 1968 and 1975, he captured a number of photographic series that documented everyday scenes, with the most notable being the Red Series. In these photographs, he predominantly utilized the color red to depict individuals, groups, and urban life. The choice of red was symbolic, representing the October Revolution, the political party, and the social system of Soviet society. It is often said that within those works critical elements toward the existing political circumstances can be found.
In Mykhailov's Klebrigkeit (1982), he added explanatory notes, or diary-like text.
In Case History, considered an important part of contemporary art, he examines the consequences of the breakdown of the Soviet Union for its people. He systematically took pictures of homeless people. It shows the situation of people who after the breakdown of the Soviet Union were not able to find their place in a secure social system. In a very direct way Mykhailov points out his critique against the "mask of beauty" of the emerging post-Soviet capitalistic way of life.
In 2004 Mykhailov first exhibited in Berlin in an exhibition concerning people living at the edge of society.