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BORIS MIKHAILOV |
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Selected Works by Boris Mikhailov
Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999
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Click on images to enlarge |
Boris Mikhailov, born in 1938 in Kharkov, Ukraine lives and works in the Ukraine and in Berlin. Case History documents Mikhailov’s perception of social disintegration ensuing from the break-up of the Soviet Union – both in terms of social structures and the resulting human condition. Case History documents the social oppression, the devastating poverty, the harshness and helplessness of everyday life for the homeless < |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“First, these were the people who had recently lost their homes. According to their position they were already the bomzhes (“bomzh” = the homeless without any social support), according to outlook they were simply the people who got into trouble.” | |
Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“Now they are becoming the bomzhes with their own class psychology and “clan” features. For me it was very important that I took their photos when they were still like “normal” people. I made a book about the people who got into trouble but didn’t manage to harden so far.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“I suddenly felt that many people were going to die at that place. And the bomzhes had to die in the first rank, like heroes – as if their lives protected the others’ lives.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999
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“It is a disgraceful world, populated by some creatures that were once humans, but now these living beings are degraded, ghastly, appalling. This "fauna" is specific especially to the period of quasi-general diffidence, specific for most of the post-communist world.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“"BOMJI". It is a term made of capital letters, recently coined. It literally refers to those people without a stable residence, practically living in the streets, wherever they can stretch their bones.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“I took the pictures displaying naked people with their things in hands like people going to gas chambers.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999
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Click on images to enlarge |
“What happened on the ruins of the ex-Soviet Empire is still unique. Motivations are different. These guys’ shabbiness is the mirror of the ruin and disappointment of a much larger number of people, most of whom no longer feel safe and wealthy as in the Soviet era; many people’s ideals are gone forever, others have simply gone mad! I have taken pictures of them and I have enjoyed it, and maybe the whole world has a better understanding of the post-communist dramas through these sequences taken directly after nature.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“This series of photos is a cycle called "Case History", that I might equally call the "clinical file of a disease". It took shape round 1997-1998. A big city, such as Harkov, offered me a great deal of raw material. And I did not miss it, I did not ignore it.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“I tried to capture the feeling of their helplessness, of their social oppression; I once witnessed a scene whereby a strong young man caviled at a poor guy passing by and kicked him hard. I even thought I had heard the poor man’s bones break. Nobody noticed it, either those nearby, or the militia man patrolling close by. I felt guilty, as I often feel guilty of things I see and take pictures of.” < |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“Many people tell me that they have noticed such guys only after seeing my photos. Before, they didn’t have eyes for them. I could not say that I am a "chronographer" above all, because I am selecting, even sniffing situations for a long time. They say about me, that I proceed like a cat hiding, watching. I am waiting for the best moment to push the button of the camera.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“I am not trying to take pictures of sensational things, but rather of those things which are in excess.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“I am trying to find the unique in that manifold reality itself. Maybe that is exactly what people like, first of all.” |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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“I think that the phenomenon I am telling the world about is post-communist and post-Soviet in its essence and that it belongs especially to this world, to the Slavic universe.”
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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When used for documentation purposes, the photograph exposes a host of fissures within society, portraying the condition of the immediate environment while simultaneously gauging it in a single snapshot. |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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These particular images first portray the working class of the Cold War era and then the poverty-stricken public, proving that both Perestroika and Glasnost left the people of the Ukraine with much less than they promised. |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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Mikhailov was never trained as a photographer but used the medium as a forum for free exchange which revealed controversial subject matter--such as nudity or the dire poverty that he and others witnessed throughout the neighborhoods of the Ukraine. |
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Boris Mikhailov
Case History1999 |
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Case History documents the social oppression, the devastating poverty, the harshness and helplessness of everyday life for the homeless |
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The entire work can be seen in Case History, see Publications |
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SHOWDOWN ARTWORKS GO HEAD-TO-HEAD FOR VISITORS' VOTES... 
CRITS Present your work for comments by other artists STREET ART Photos & Videos of Graffiti, Murals, Perform- -ance, Found Works... |
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