As oneof the leading and most controversial artists to have emerged from the former SovietUnion, Boris Mikhailov brought to life a profoundly tumultuous chapter of 20 thcentury history: the height, decline and fall of the Soviet Union and itsdisturbing aftermath. With an oeuvre that spans over 40 years, the Ukrainianphotographer observes and analyzes the political and social mechanisms ofEastern European society from the inside.
Throughhis provocative nudes and disturbing photo series, the tragic spectrum andturmoil of life under the communist Soviets is mercilessly documented. As such,set against the bleak backdrop of a disenfranchised community, he has displayedthe position of the individual within the historical mechanisms of the publicideology of Soviet rule.
Afterthe collapse of the Soviet Union, he continued to capture the grim situation ofpeople who were not able to catch hold with their newly attained “freedom” inthis semi-secured social system. By means of staged photos, but also surreptitiousstreet photography, he points out his critique against the “mask of beauty” ofthe uprising post-soviet capitalistic way of life. Accordingly, for his widelyreckoned photo sequence Case History(1997-1998), Mikhailov ruthlessly presented the social disintegration, thestruggle for survival and the deadlock of the old-age poverty so idiosyncraticfor the post-communist world.
Hisphotographs are certainly not for the squeamish. Portraying humanity’s outcastsin an exotic and sometimes even demonic way, like specimens in a grotesque, Boschianfreak show, there is a discomforting asymmetry between the photographer and hissubjects.
Ifanything though, in all its revulsion and absurdity, Mikhailov’s haunting photo’ssolemnly lay bare that Perestroika and Glasnost left the people with much lessthan promised and hoped for.
His workis now to be viewed, among others, in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York and in London’s Saatchi Gallery.
Throughhis provocative nudes and disturbing photo series, the tragic spectrum andturmoil of life under the communist Soviets is mercilessly documented. As such,set against the bleak backdrop of a disenfranchised community, he has displayedthe position of the individual within the historical mechanisms of the publicideology of Soviet rule.
Afterthe collapse of the Soviet Union, he continued to capture the grim situation ofpeople who were not able to catch hold with their newly attained “freedom” inthis semi-secured social system. By means of staged photos, but also surreptitiousstreet photography, he points out his critique against the “mask of beauty” ofthe uprising post-soviet capitalistic way of life. Accordingly, for his widelyreckoned photo sequence Case History(1997-1998), Mikhailov ruthlessly presented the social disintegration, thestruggle for survival and the deadlock of the old-age poverty so idiosyncraticfor the post-communist world.
Hisphotographs are certainly not for the squeamish. Portraying humanity’s outcastsin an exotic and sometimes even demonic way, like specimens in a grotesque, Boschianfreak show, there is a discomforting asymmetry between the photographer and hissubjects.
Ifanything though, in all its revulsion and absurdity, Mikhailov’s haunting photo’ssolemnly lay bare that Perestroika and Glasnost left the people with much lessthan promised and hoped for.
His workis now to be viewed, among others, in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York and in London’s Saatchi Gallery.
http://thewildmagazine.com/blog/picturing-the-downtrodden/
