Not every artist gets inspiration from society's homeless and down-and-out people, but Ukrainian photographer Borys Mikhailov does. On Jan. 9, he won Germany’s Goslar Kaiserring prize -- one of the most renowned international contemporary art awards.
Through the lens of his camera Mikhailov, 76, explored the unvarnished side of life. He gained fame in the West photographing dispossessed people in his native Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. He focused on citizens who could not cope with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Kaiserring jury described Mikhailov, who shares his time between Berlin and Kharkiv, as “one of the most important chroniclers of Soviet and post-Soviet society.”
The award ceremony will be held on Oct. 10 in Goslar, a historic city in Germany and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Following the ceremony, Mikhailov’s exhibition will open at Mönchehaus Museum.
Mikhailov was born in Kharkiv in 1938. After graduating, he had a job as an engineer at a missile construction factory, which he has referred to as “boring” in his interviews. But it was this job that triggered his artistic side as he soon found out that the factory’s building used to shelter homeless children who lived and worked there. Mikhailov made a film about the history of the place and then turned to photography, which quickly became his hobby.
One of the Soviet taboos that Mikhailov breached was shooting female nudity. In Soviet times, he recalls, if anyone photographed nudity, they wouldn’t show the works to public. Mikhailov exhibited his works illegally, throwing discreet exhibitions in private apartments or basements, risking criminal charges.
Eventually in the late 1960s his photography got him in trouble with the KGB and cost him the job at the factory. His frequent use of red was considered an unwelcome political statement in reference to the red Soviet flag.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, Mikhailov focused the tumultuous upheaval and those who didn’t adjust well — homeless people, prostitutes and others.
“The collapse of the state was also a collapse of civilization,” Mikhailov said in an interview to Die Zeit in 2007. It brought a new type of people “with a broken face.”
In the early 1990s, Mikhailov made his first trip to the West and soon received recognition.
The Kaiserring jury mentioned his innovate techniques of superimposition, post-coloring, defamiliarization and humorously critical combinations of text and picture.
“Superficially he employed an aesthetic that was loyal to the (Soviet) regime, but at the same time it was ironically subverted,” the jury’s statement reads.
Mikhailov’s works can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Stedeljik Museum in Amsterdam, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Foto Museum Winterthur in Kunstmuseum Basel, Berlinische Galerie in Berlin and many others.
Currently Mikhailov’s works are exhibited in Paris Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve. The series from 1989 comprises 67 photographs, retouched 26 years later, offering a fresh perspective on his work. The exhibition is open until Feb. 28.
Kyiv Post staff writer Victoria Petrenko can be reached at [email protected].
