Boris Mikhailov

Boris Mikhailov
Ohne Titel,
From Red, 1968-1975
Cibachrome, 30 x 20 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, gift Sammlung Andreas Züst
2001-001-004

© Boris Mikhailov / 2007 Pro Litteris, Zürich

b. 1938 (Kharkiv, UA), lives and works in Berlin, DE and Kharkiv, UA
After the political changes caused by the lifting of the Iron Curtain, the West discovered the work of Boris Mikhailov for the first time in the mid-1990s. In the USSR, his photographs had been shown mostly in small, private exhibitions, and it was not until the simultaneous publication of two books, By the Ground (1991) and At Dusk (1993), that he finally achieved first international and then national recognition. Mikhailov’s work shows people succumbing to the leaden agony that grew out of the post-communist chaos. This is also true for Salt Lake (1986), a—at least in our eyes—ghastly Ucranian holiday resort.