ARTIST:

Boris Mikhailov

Case History (page 195)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 187)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 257)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 61)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 459)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 189)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 471)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 253)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 279)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 90)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 84)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 317)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 107)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 171)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 77)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 63)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 174)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 265)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 269)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 356)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 457)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 447)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 287)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 239)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 235)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 295)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 231)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 285)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (Page 193)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (Page 312)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 193)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 193)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 193)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 31)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 44)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 44)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 114)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 141)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 429)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (cover/page 399)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 427)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 368)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 219)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 423)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 232)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 352)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 407)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 246)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 22)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 390)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 244)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 366)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 354)
Boris Mikhailov
Case history (page 464)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 306)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 117)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 273)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 179)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 470)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 166)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 226)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 192)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 110)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 76)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 236)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 65)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 68)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History ( page 389)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 138)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 372)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 188)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 150)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 59)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 42)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 198)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 433)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 466)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 20)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 343)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 85)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 351)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 371)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 156)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 169)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 383)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 443)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 355)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 106)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 94)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 393)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 130)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History (page 386)
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“First, these were the people who had recently lost their homes. According to their position they were already the bomzhes (“bomzh” = the homeless without any social support), according to outlook they were simply the people who got into trouble.”
Case History (cover/Page 295) 1999
Boris Mikhailov
Mikhailov does not avoid the moral complexities of the new Russia and paid his models to pose in an ambiguous intervention that displaces the images from the purely documentary to a form of staged self-consciousness, although ultimately it only underlines the powerlessness of his subjects.
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“I am trying to find the unique in that manifold reality itself. Maybe that is exactly what people like, first of all.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History documents the social oppression, the devastating poverty, the harshness and helplessness of everyday life for the homeless
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“I took the pictures displaying naked people with their things in hands like people going to gas chambers.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“I tried to capture the feeling of their helplessness, of their social oppression; I once witnessed a scene whereby a strong young man caviled at a poor guy passing by and kicked him hard. I even thought I had heard the poor man’s bones break. Nobody noticed it, either those nearby, or the militia man patrolling close by. I felt guilty, as I often feel guilty of things I see and take pictures of.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“What happened on the ruins of the ex-Soviet Empire is still unique. Motivations are different. These guys’ shabbiness is the mirror of the ruin and disappointment of a much larger number of people, most of whom no longer feel safe and wealthy as in the Soviet era; many people’s ideals are gone forever, others have simply gone mad! I have taken pictures of them and I have enjoyed it, and maybe the whole world has a better understanding of the post-communist dramas through these sequences taken directly after nature.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“This series of photos is a cycle called "Case History", that I might equally call the "clinical file of a disease". It took shape round 1997-1998. A big city, such as Harkov, offered me a great deal of raw material. And I did not miss it, I did not ignore it.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“Many people tell me that they have noticed such guys only after seeing my photos. Before, they didn’t have eyes for them. I could not say that I am a "chronographer" above all, because I am selecting, even sniffing situations for a long time. They say about me, that I proceed like a cat hiding, watching. I am waiting for the best moment to push the button of the camera.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“It is a disgraceful world, populated by some creatures that were once humans, but now these living beings are degraded, ghastly, appalling. This "fauna" is specific especially to the period of quasi-general diffidence, specific for most of the post-communist world.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“I am not trying to take pictures of sensational things, but rather of those things which are in excess.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
These particular images first portray the working class of the Cold War era and then the poverty-stricken public, proving that both Perestroika and Glasnost left the people of the Ukraine with much less than they promised.
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“First, these were the people who had recently lost their homes. According to their position they were already the bomzhes (“bomzh” = the homeless without any social support), according to outlook they were simply the people who got into trouble.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Mikhailov was never trained as a photographer but used the medium as a forum for free exchange which revealed controversial subject matter--such as nudity or the dire poverty that he and others witnessed throughout the neighborhoods of the Ukraine.

Mikhailov- 1999 Case History
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
When used for documentation purposes, the photograph exposes a host of fissures within society, portraying the condition of the immediate environment while simultaneously gauging it in a single snapshot.
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“"BOMJI". It is a term made of capital letters, recently coined. It literally refers to those people without a stable residence, practically living in the streets, wherever they can stretch their bones.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“I suddenly felt that many people were going to die at that place. And the bomzhes had to die in the first rank, like heroes – as if their lives protected the others’ lives.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Boris Mikhailov, born in 1938 in Kharkov, Ukraine lives and works in the Ukraine and in Berlin. Case History documents Mikhailov’s perception of social disintegration ensuing from the break-up of the Soviet Union – both in terms of social structures and the resulting human condition. Case History documents the social oppression, the devastating poverty, the harshness and helplessness of everyday life for the homeless
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“Now they are becoming the bomzhes with their own class psychology and “clan” features. For me it was very important that I took their photos when they were still like “normal” people. I made a book about the people who got into trouble but didn’t manage to harden so far.”
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
Case History
Boris Mikhailov
“I think that the phenomenon I am telling the world about is post-communist and post-Soviet in its essence and that it belongs especially to this world, to the Slavic universe.”
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