Boris Mikhailov’s creative vision and working method organically grow out of the life of Kharkiv – the city with which the master has deep and complex relationships. In the 1960s – 1980s, Kharkiv was a powerful center of student life, a Soviet social stratum-construct “technical intelligentsia”, and a city under intensified party control due to the presence of strategically important factories.
Having obtained an engineering education at the Kharkiv Institute of Municipal Construction (now Kharkiv National University of Urban Economy named after O. M. Beketov), Mikhailov worked as an engineer at a local factory. There he first took a camera in his hands, albeit a movie camera, deciding to try his hand at shooting a short film about this institution. The factory laboratory was also used by the artist for developing and printing photographs taken, as they said then, “for himself,” including nudes, for which, according to the author[mfn] First Look: Helmut Lang Collection by Ukrainian Photographer Boris Mikhailov. DTF Magazine, 2017. https://donttakefake.com/pervyj-vzglyad-kollektsiya-helmut-lang-i-ukrainskogo-fotografa-borisa-mihajlova/. [/mfn], he was dismissed. After that, Mikhailov got a job as a plumber at Vodokanal-project, while simultaneously continuing his explorations in photography. His passion for it led Mikhailov to the regional photo club organized at the House of Trade Unions. There he met a circle of authors who later, in 1971, formed the group “Vremya” (Yevgeny Pavlov and Yuri Rupin, Alexander Suprun, Oleg Malovany, Alexander Sytnichenko, Gennady Tubalevyev, and Anatoly Makienko). The group’s activity was aimed less at joint projects and more at communication and discussion, during which criteria for evaluating works were formed, gradually shaping into the “theory of the blow.” According to it, photography had to be a powerful gesture, a critical statement. According to Mikhailov, the main task of the group members then was “to stop a person by any means in front of a work”[mfn]Kriventsova A., Ridny N. Boris Mikhailov: “Conceptualism for me is an analytical position.” Art Magazine. 2008. No. 70. URL: http://moscowartmagazine.com/issue/22/article/345.[/mfn]. In his work, Mikhailov consistently embodied this principle. An early series by the artist that outlined a new creative approach in the spirit of the “theory of the blow” was “Yesterday’s Sandwich” (late 1960s – 1970s), executed using the technique of overlays – combining two color slides. The overlays became the perfect expression of the apparent transparency of Soviet society, which in reality was entirely based on the ability to read “between the lines.” Oleg Malovany, Yevgeny Pavlov, and later Roman Pyatkovka also turned to this technique. It is worth recalling the international context and the series of “sandwiches” (as they were called by Kharkiv residents) “Sweet Mood” (1975-1983) by Lithuanian master Vitas Luckus, with whom Mikhailov was acquainted and communicated extensively.
The 1970s – 1980s were a period of dialogue for Mikhailov with the totalitarian Soviet reality. The photographer sharply felt the compromised ideal and the need to make the quality of the “picture” correspond to the quality of life. In contrast to the positive visual self-representation of socialism, he chose a negativist position, which found expression in the deliberate disregard of the aesthetic component of the image. Such features unacceptable for official photographs and deliberately amateurish, such as frank kitsch and naivety of shooting, randomness of compositions, and obvious “mistakes” (for example, tilted horizons), poor print quality, which were used in the series “Suzi and Others” (late 1960s – 1970s), quickly became full-fledged means of expression for Mikhailov. The artist visualizes those things that were traditionally silenced by the state. In particular, in “Suzi and Others,” the issue of the body as an object socially conditioned and controlled by the regime on par with the economy, culture, or historical narratives is raised. Erotica and pornography were persecuted in the USSR, but through the exploitation of images of corporeality, the author not only crosses taboos. Consciously placing himself in the position of a provocateur towards the masses, the artist resorts to a sharp gesture that makes one doubt its ethics but at the same time reveals “blind spots” in the viewer’s ethics.
The photographer believes that the things that appear or do not appear in the camera’s lens are evidence of a civic position – an idea close to the methods of critical realism (both Mikhailov himself and Galina Sklyarenko point to the connection with this tradition[mfn]Mikhailov B. Vilensky D. Boris Mikhailov – Dmitry Vilensky: the ethics of gaze. Art Magazine. 2005. No. 57. URL: http://moscowartmagazine.com/issue/32/article/589.[/mfn] [mfn]Sklyarenko G. “The Dotted Line of Conceptualism.” On the Picture of Ukrainian Art of the Second Half of the 20th Century. Contemporary Art. 2010. No. 7. P. 214.[/mfn]). However, the artist is far from a strict black-and-white division, choosing rather the role of a recorder of signals that fill the surrounding environment. Thus, the oversaturation of society with ideology became the impetus for creating the “Red Series” (1968-1975). Mikhailov not only states the ubiquitous presence of party influence but also reveals the person who supports it – homo soveticus. The central character of the “Red Series” (as well as the entire work of the artist from the late 1970s to early 1980s) is the average person – the absolute opposite of the cult of the “new Soviet man” imposed by the authorities. The visual ecstasy of the photos is supported by the almost caricatured texture of images from the crowd at demonstrations, interspersed with domestic still lifes or shots of urban space. The phenomenon of homo soveticus is also analyzed in the series “Black Archive” (1968-1979). It includes frames that, through the clumsiness of everyday details, capture two dimensions of Soviet man’s existence – public (ideologized, regulated) and private (a space of illusory freedom).
One of the widespread everyday practices that gives an idea of mass taste and mentality at the time were so-called “luriks” – enlarged, retouched, colored portraits. They were especially popular in small towns and villages, where special people (“typesetters”) were sent to place orders, who then passed the material to photographers. Luriks were a semi-legal trade engaged in by many Kharkiv authors, including Mikhailov. This is how he gained access to the archives of vernacular photography, which became the basis for the series “Luriks” (1971-1985). The luriks technique, with its deliberately sloppy coloring and brightness of colors (which were not allowed in commercial luriks), transforms into the quintessence of the “Soviet” with revealed typicality and averaging of images. For the master, the tradition of luriks embodied the chasm between Western and local realities – primarily as a symbol of technical backwardness (due to the difficulty of accessing color photography in the Soviet Union) and the obsessive desire to “make the beautiful even more beautiful”[mfn]Neumaier D., Voorhees J. Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-related Works of Art. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004. p. 271. [/mfn]. A similar sense of absurdity and idiocy permeates another series made using hand-coloring technique – “Soc-Art” (1975-1986). Unlike “Luriks,” it used the master’s own photos. The photographer captures moments where the characters’ satisfaction and their complete inability to see themselves from the outside are especially felt. This excessive pathos and overly intense, unnatural color add a comic effect combined with the protagonists’ self-forgetful immersion in the moment.
This last feature is also observed in purely documentary series, such as “Dances” (1978) and “Salt Lake” (1986). The first was shot on a dance floor in Kharkiv, where mostly older people spent their leisure time together. Showing their clumsiness and naivety forms a counterpoint that causes discomfort in the viewer. But this discomfort is not due to the artist’s sarcastic attitude towards the people captured (the author’s presence in the works is minimized) but to the abnormality of the plot itself, its exclusion from the audience’s view – a view nurtured by society and transmitting its values. The confrontation with this “nurtured” gaze was the essence of the “theory of the blow.” The same feeling of awkwardness, as if from spying, is experienced when viewing the series “Salt Lake,” dedicated to a “health resort” spontaneously organized on a lake in Sloviansk, where a local factory discharges waste. In both projects, in contrast to the healthy, aestheticized corporeality promoted by socialist realism, a non-heroic body arises, a deliberately imperfect body living in absolute indistinction, merged with the surrounding reality. However, in the early 1980s series, Mikhailov sometimes resorts to a contrasting technique and instead of showing people without masks, he offers them to play a certain role. Such an openly staged series, where the photographer himself appears as one of the main characters, is “Crimean Snobbery,” in which Mikhailov and his friends parody scenes of resort “bourgeois” luxury lifestyle (1982).
Despite the variety of approaches, all the listed series from the mid-1970s to the first half of the 1980s are concentrated around the image of the “little man” – a factor that once allowed Boris Mikhailov to integrate into the environment of Moscow conceptualists. He met some of them, including Ilya Kabakov, in Moscow in 1979. As the master recalls, he then showed Kabakov his “Red Series” and “Black Archive” (1968-1979). The glorification of the insignificant, intimate resonated with the philosophy of conceptualists, which was largely a reaction to the total literary-centrism of Russian imperial culture, including visual arts. Taking this tendency to absurdity, the conceptualists’ optics tune into a microscope mode, where insignificant, small things are presented with the scale of grand narratives. Similarly, Mikhailov focuses on everyday life as one of the main thematic vectors. The routine, monotony, and non-importance of frames, which become characteristic features of many of the master’s projects of the 1980s, are first clearly outlined in the series “Twos” and “Fours” (1982-1983), in which the author composes on one sheet pairs or groups of four almost identical, absolutely non-eventful images. The deadly obviousness and one-dimensionality of the frames become an obstacle to immersion in them, focusing attention on the sheet itself on which they are placed. The fundamental aesthetic “non-tension” of photography, as defined by Mikhailov[mfn]Agamov-Tupitsyn V. Flightless Aeronautics: Articles, Reviews, and Conversations with Artists. Moscow: New Literary Review, 2018.[/mfn], attracts textual accompaniment. Comments on the works become an integral structural element of such conceptual projects by Mikhailov as “Horizontal Pictures, Vertical Calendars” (1982), “Viscosity” (1982), “Unfinished Dissertation” (1984-1985), and the later “Look at Me, I Look at the Water” (1999). Executed in the format of an artist’s book, these series refer to the widespread Soviet samizdat practice of the time. In Mikhailov’s books, direct shots are combined with staged ones, which, however, do not violate their basic documentary nature. The era emerges in the gaps created by the break between the photograph and the captions: the master does not use obvious iconic references to the Soviet Union but appeals directly to personal experience. He is interested not in history but in memory, which is why the images immediately appear as if aged, nostalgic.
The retrospective approach to the present fits well into the visualization of the transitional period of the early post-Soviet years – the series “Near the Ground” (1991) and “Dusk” (1993). Both projects were shot with the “Horizon” camera, which Mikhailov previously used in the series “Arles, Paris and…” (1989), during his first trip abroad, to France. But while “Arles, Paris and…” was a reaction to the new, unusual Western environment and the panoramic compositions here give a sense of space as a visual allegory of a liberal environment, the photos of “Near the Ground” and “Dusk,” on the contrary, feel cramped in format. Their angles have a painful incompleteness, which is quite natural when working with living processes that have an unformed character. The toning in brownish (“Near the Ground”) and blue (“Dusk”) shades levels the depth of the frames, equating all objects in the camera’s field of view: living, dead, people, animals, buildings – all lose their volume, becoming extras. The eye stops on them as certain rhythms, shadows filling the environment. It is indicative that in the 1990s, the street was typically perceived as a certain destructive and autonomous environment (phrases like “the street raised,” “street environment,” “it’s all the influence of the street!” were common). Mikhailov models this alienation on emotional and visual levels, and such an authorial position may seem dehumanizing. But behind the cold and provocative ethnographic nature of the works, the fascination with insignificant, barely noticeable things stands a rather powerful empathetic impulse. It is not worth talking here about classic “humanism,” which increasingly acquires the features of ethically regulated ideology; rather, this impulse should be defined as recognition of the reality of the Other. For the photographer, it is important to capture the presence of that reality ignored by the broad masses.
The artist’s gaze also observes internal transformations and the definition of his own identity against the historical background of the transitional 1990s. “I-Am-Not-I” (1992) is a series of nude self-portraits where, posing with various objects (an enema, a phallic object, a saber), the artist recreates a new image of the “anti-hero” in a well-known iconography – from compositional schemes of classical art to socialist realism. The desire and discomfort of the need to find one’s place in the new social context stimulate further development of the playful element. As already mentioned, elements of performativity were present in “Crimean Snobbery,” but it was from the early 1990s that it acquired the features of a coherent artistic strategy. If in previous series the author observed and analyzed certain external social processes, now he turns to introspection, seeking an answer to the question “Who am I?” against the backdrop of the present. Contact with the unusual Western reality gave rise to “Salzau Photo Time” (1996-1997), created during a residency at the Salzau Cultural Center (Germany): the series is unusually pictorial for Mikhailov and evokes ironic associations with Eden, from which Adam and Eve (the photographer and his wife Vita) were expelled into the capitalist world.
As we see, Mikhailov’s practice, with its declarativity, is not alien to the performative component. As the artist himself describes the stages of the creative process: “… first I look for a theme, then I look for an image, then I immerse myself in it, during the process a conceptual move common to each project is born, and only then do I shoot. All this time I am in communication with my wards and future heroes of the pictures”[mfn]Art Ukraine. 2013. URL: http://artukraine.com.ua/a/boris-mihaylov-ya-dumayu-chto-souchastie-eto-harakteristika-moego-metoda-v-iskusstve/#.XGbVfbhS94E)[/mfn]. Therefore, a brief episode of participation in socially oriented actions of the “Rapid Response Group” (together with Sergey Bratkov, Sergey Solonsky, and Vita Mikhailova) logically fits into the artist’s biography. The only photographic project of the group was the series “If I Were a German…” (1994), while in other cases photography was primarily used by the artists for documentation.
A specific diffusion of documentary and performative is the series “Medical History” (1997-1998), for which staged portraits of Kharkiv homeless people were made (however, among the frames there are also “fake” photos, such as with Vita Mikhailova, the master’s wife, and the artist’s father). And although in many of his projects after 1991 Mikhailov still records the presence of echoes of the Soviet in various spheres of life, he does not get stuck in criticism of the Soviet. For the photographer, the key is the ability to respond to the urgent demands of the era, and he is confident that “the one who reproduces his time remains”[mfn]Mikhailov B. Vilensky D. Boris Mikhailov – Dmitry Vilensky: the ethics of gaze. Art Magazine. 2005. No. 57. URL: http://moscowartmagazine.com/issue/32/article/589.[/mfn]. Created during a period of severe crisis that threw many people who failed to adapt to new economic conditions to the margins of society, “Medical History” is based not on an ideological antithesis to censorship that existed in the USSR but on a comparison with financial censorship that arose within capitalism. Both types of censorship, despite different mechanisms, pursued the same goal – through regulation and filtering of plots, to create illusions of well-being that would support the system’s stasis. It is no coincidence that Alexander Rappoport begins the text about this series with an anecdotal story about a publisher who refused to print the master’s works in his magazine, arguing that they might scare off clients[mfn]Rappoport A. A Man Without a Certain Place. URL: http://www.guelman.ru/xz/362/xx42/xx4228.htm[/mfn]. In a similar vein are the series “Weddings” (2002) and “Tea, Coffee, Cappuccino” (2010-2011). The photographer uses similar techniques (attention to the marginal, anti-aestheticism) when working with foreign material, as evidenced by the series “On the Street” (2001-2003), shot in Berlin, where the master moved at the end of the 1990s, and “Banzai!” (2006-2007), made during a trip to Tokyo.
Overall, no method (overlay, luriks, direct or staged photography) is a dogma for Mikhailov. The method is always subordinated to the author’s optics, which is inevitably tuned to capturing shifts in society. However, the latest projects are atypical for the photographer attempts at a broader coverage of the situation as opposed to the intimate-personal works of previous years. These are “Theater of Military Actions” (2014), shot during the revolution on Maidan, and “Parliament” (2017) – a series of glitch, artificially visually distorted portraits of politicians[mfn]This project represented Ukraine at the 57th Venice Biennale[/mfn].
Boris Mikhailov is often attributed the role of enfant terrible of photography. However, the eccentricity of his works is not the result of opposition to the audience (I – They) and open criticism (in fact, the author never resorts to evaluative judgments), but, on the contrary, complete fusion with everyday life. This fusion forms a mirror, and the moment of recognizing one’s reflection in it gives a provocative effect. But the source of provocation is society itself, in which the master marks “points of tension.” The latter happens thanks to Mikhailov’s analytical thinking, the ability to synthesize and conceptualize, to give expressiveness to ideas, trends, and techniques promoted by the era.Type of comment: Summary
Author: Oleksandra Osadcha
