Boris Mikhailov (photographer)

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."

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. From 1968 to 1975 he shot several series documenting everyday scenes, the best known of them being the Red Series. In these photographs he mainly used the colour red, to picture people, groups and city-life. Red symbolized the October Revolution, 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.

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