What Camera Does Boris Mikhailov Use
Prankster, performer, and cocky-taught lensman Boris Mikhailov might be said to embody the classic of the holy fool—that thought originating in the Russian Orthodox Church and carrying into literature in which someone pretends to be mad in club to offer spiritual guidance. Since he began making photographs in 1965, Mikhailov has continually broken the rules, both formal and ideological, to convey larger truths. He was built-in in 1938 in Kharkov, Ukraine; years later, in a now-famous story, Mikhailov was fired from his task as an engineer when he was caught using the manufacturing plant's darkroom to develop nude photographs of his wife. The trunk—whether his own or his subjects'—remains a constant presence in his piece of work, including images from the 1970s and '80s that played with and subverted Soviet-era visual codes. This play was often sexualized, leading i observer to describe Mikhailov equally a "surrealist eroticist."
Throughout his career, his irreverent piece of work has flirted with both conceptual and documentary traditions, employing a range of photographic techniques. Much of this prolific and diverse output was not shown in public until the early on 1990s, after the plummet of the Soviet Union. Presently thereafter, in 1997, Mikhailov began his controversial series Example History (1997–98), which documented postal service-Soviet Kharkov'southward growing homeless population.
Mikhailov now makes his dwelling in Berlin, where he lives with his wife, Vita, his longtime creative collaborator. In May 2015, in Venice, during the opening of the Venice Biennale, curator Viktor Misiano, an old acquaintance of Mikhailov's, met the photographer in an apartment near the Campo Santo Stefano. Vita Mikhailov was besides nowadays and joins in this conversation that touches on Mikhailov's piece of work then and now, the Soviet dissident poet Eduard Limonov, and Ukraine'southward recent political upheaval.
Viktor Misiano: The last fourth dimension we saw one another was last year in Kharkov, at the Yermilov Centre for Contemporary Art at the opening of an exhibition in honor of your 70-fifth altogether. I happened to be moderating a lengthy, heated console discussion on your work. It was impossible to ignore how proud the urban center is of you, how much you mean to it. And for you lot Kharkov means so much! It's your city, after all. And and so much of your artwork is tied to this place.
Boris Mikhailov: At i bespeak I spent a lot of time developing this theme and came to the conclusion that Kharkov and I are ane and the aforementioned. Not just considering I was born at that place, but mostly considering, having lived there for many years—though I now live in Berlin—I've deeply felt all of its good and bad sides. Peradventure I'm wrong—after all, I don't take a formal artistic education, I came to art from the outside, equally an amateur—but it seems to me that at that place isn't a serious artistic tradition in this city. In that location'southward only a small museum and an arts plant that hasn't produced anybody of significance. In spite of all that, Kharkov is a city with lots of energy, a urban center with enormous factories and scientific centers (as a affair of fact, this was the first identify in the USSR to split the atom). This is the offset capital of Ukraine. In other words, this is a highly tense place with a disproportionately express cultural tradition. As a result, at that place was nada here to influence me. Living here, I constitute myself in a sort of aught state— a land of total openness. If in that location was annihilation of importance hither for me it was the local literature and song. This is where the vocalist [Klavdiya] Shulzhenko was from; she was an idol for the entire country. Though we have to acknowledge she was rather vulgar, very much so in fact. Just like the poet [Eduard] Limonov—a bright writer, but even he is vulgar. So I think vulgarity is 1 of the particular characteristics of this place, since it doesn't have a cultural tradition, but it does have energy and ambition. In some sense this vulgarity can even be considered revolutionary.
Misiano: It's proficient that you lot mention Limonov; I always thought you lot two had a lot in common. In fact, he has a story, "East Side, West Side," in which over the course of xxx pages he describes walking through New York's Harlem at night. Nil of note happens—he merely re-creates his visual impressions—merely it'south impossible to tear oneself abroad from these unbelievably bright descriptions. The way he builds these descriptions is like a motion picture reel, they develop earlier us like a literary photographic sequence.
Mikhailov: As soon as I got to New York, in the late '80s, I went to Harlem. Everybody told me not to go, and if I went, not to take pictures. Of course I went, and I went with a photographic camera. I photographed from the hip, without looking through the lens. That was a special camera, a Horizon—prolonged exposure, panoramic views. I was incredibly curious; I'd never seen annihilation like information technology.
It seemed of import to me at that time to break out of the traditional function of the photographer who is removed from life. I wanted to raise the question: Why do you lot have the right to photograph other people?
Many years agone in Kharkov, I was at a party where there was a pupil from Africa. So, at my job as a factory engineer, I was warned that if I was ever establish in the company of foreigners again, I would be fired. Because of that, I was extremely interested to detect myself surrounded past African Americans, to empathize how they live—what's the atmosphere of this neighborhood? All all of a sudden, every bit I was crossing the street, right in the middle of it, some alpine person suddenly hit me in the mouth unexpectedly with his huge fist. My ears were ringing. I was stunned and started yelling; he grumbled something at me and walked off. Then, I hadn't walked more than fifty meters before some other guy, squatting by a wall, shook his finger at me and also grumbled something. I had a feeling like he already knew what had just happened to me. So that punch in the face was what I remembered more than than annihilation, for a long time, about my beginning trip to America. And the most amazing thing was that zilch even hurt from that dial. It was a kind of warning: "Conscientious, buddy, we have our own manner of life here."
Misiano: It'south a very telling story. It seems that the life you were interested in exploring entered into dialogue with you lot, answered your call. I was likewise in Harlem during that same fourth dimension, in the late '80s, but no one laid a finger on me. That'southward precisely what, in my understanding, you men of Kharkov—yous and Limonov—have in common, this unbelievable ability to unmask the vital pulse hidden beneath reality'south vanquish.
Mikhailov: Worse—nosotros bring real life upon ourselves! In one of his poems, Limonov has this line: "You smelled like Iranian piss." At the time, this frank and urinary image, completely unheard of then, won me over. Then, when I met the woman to whom these lines were dedicated, I tried to photo her, but nothing turned out. Yes, there'due south definitely a connection between me and Limonov: We're both concerned with letting go of aesthetics and outward beauty. What'southward most important for u.s.a. aren't outward appearances simply the innermost depths of life and humanity.
Misiano: There's besides another thing y'all take in common. Limonov has a tendency to plough life into a performance, presenting himself as an artistic persona. You lot tin can't deny that elements of this are also very much part of your being. For both of you life is a performance, it's a stage on which to perform.
Mikhailov: I tin can't say that the performative was initially embedded in my work. Early on in my career I made a few cocky-portraits, and in some of them I fifty-fifty depicted myself as historical or literary characters, merely I stopped making that kind of work. Merely and so came 1991—the fourth dimension when the Soviet Union cruel. That's when I made a serial called I am non I, in which I once again began photographing myself. Simply why did I create that work? Probably considering with the country changing, I felt it was necessary to uncover a new protagonist. Simply this was a protagonist who was sort of trying on the icons of the superheroes of Western mass culture—like Rambo, etc., and he was an antihero at the same time. It seemed important to me at that fourth dimension to break out of the traditional office of the lensman who is removed from life, which he photographs as if from the outside. I wanted to enhance the question: Why practice yous have the correct to photograph other people? And who are you? That's when I started featuring myself, suggesting in these images an answer to my ain question: the role I play, that is who I really am.
Misiano: Do you mean to say that the fall of the foundations of Soviet life too broke the foundations of photography, broke the traditional subject-object interrelation betwixt the photograph and reality? Very interesting thought!
Mikhailov: Yes, what was happening in the country at that time had a huge affect on me. It forced me to position myself differently in life and in photography.
Misiano: And nonetheless, when I was talking well-nigh the performative, I was referring non only to your appearing as a character in the photographs but also to diverse forms of artistic intervention that you have employed in the developing process. For instance, in The Red Serial (1968–75), you began painting over photographs of Soviet demonstrations. Ilya Kabakov [the Soviet-born American Conceptual artist] was very enthusiastic well-nigh this series. Information technology was, he said, as if the artist-protagonist is expressing himself through this method. That he, i.east., you, imagines himself as some superloyal Soviet citizen who not simply docilely attends official parades, but also innocently colors the photographs of those parades to make them more joyful and festive.
Mikhailov: I really adopted that technique because information technology harks dorsum to an earlier epoch in the history of photography when it was still blackness and white and customary to color photographs in. I was doing that sort of work by commission and receiving lots of orders. Of form, when I started using this method on my own photographs, there arose this element of playful liberation of which you speak. But in that location's another important point here: Oddly enough, this doctoring of the photo, this supposedly awkward coloration, brought the image closer to reality. It made it a bit vulgar or unrespectable (as a matter of fact, that same ceremony exhibition in Kharkov was called merely that—Unrespectable). And that's how life really is—it'southward vulgar and unrespectable.
Vita Mikhailov [Boris's married woman]: Viktor's question had a point that you overlooked. It'south not only that you perform in your own photographs just that you look at life itself equally a performance. For me, for case, a person on the street is just walking, just to you, he's performing.
Misiano: That reminds me of a book by the anthropologist Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More (2005). Information technology describes how, in the later Soviet catamenia, people who observed regime-imposed social rituals, such as May Day demonstrations or trade-union and party meetings, rather than interpreting them as roles to be performed, were actually changing the meaning of the social gild. That's precisely why, though it seemed to anybody that the USSR would last forever, no i was surprised when it ended.
Mikhailov: I'm not sure the word performance pertains to me. I'll put it differently. Later the Khrushchev reforms of the late 1950s and early 1960s, it was clear to me that everything had to change. And though on the surface everything was condign frozen, I was all the same constantly looking for signs of bodily change. That's why all of life—built as information technology was on contrasting rituals and changes—seemed so unreal, at times most carnival-like. Life was kind of struggling to break out of narrow forms that were being imposed on it externally. That's precisely what I was trying to show in my work.
Misiano: That's probably why your Soviet-period work is gratuitous from the photojournalistic clichés that aimed to expose the repressiveness of the Soviet government. For you that life is still vital, playful, and comical, at times fifty-fifty to the point of idiocy.
Mikhailov: Still, life then was clouded past a sort of tension. After all, the outset of my photographic career brought me face-to-face with the KGB. I wasn't jailed, just I was fired from my chore and the visit by the KGB to check on me disturbed my inner peace. I felt their watchful gaze all the fourth dimension. Specially when I traveled to Republic of lithuania to attend photo-festivals.
Vita Mikhailov: Moreover, at that time not only the regime just all of order exercised control over what he photographed. If Borya would be photographing sunsets, there would accept been no objection. Simply when he photographed something out of the ordinary, then anyone could come up to him and inquire: What are you lot photographing here? That sort of random monitor passerby was always looking over our shoulder.
Mikhailov: Every fourth dimension I take a pic of unusual things—some kind of rusty pipe on the street—I feel a certain caste of tension, I feel a sure degree of fearfulness. Society continues to command you—controlling behavior for which it can't notice a reasonable explanation.
Misiano: Guild controls your gaze—where and how you should be looking.
Mikhailov: It raises the abiding question—to photograph or non to photo? Will yous dare or won't you lot? And nosotros're non only talking most political or social conduct, we're talking almost photographs, almost deport in photography. You lot know you lot can't photograph in a certain way, but you feel that the photograph is demanding that you do. Y'all accept to practice it! To photograph precisely in this way!
Vita Mikhailov: In the 1950s in Kharkov at that place was a sadly famous upshot. A grouping of young people dreamed of a different and freer life; they listened to Western music, engaged in creative projects, and then on. They were arrested and some of them were imprisoned. We later saw their instance file, which contained a lot of photographs: these young folks had taken pictures of themselves on the beach in bathing suits. As a upshot, according to what was written in their official case file, they were charged with taking "Western poses," and were sent to prison on pornography charges. That was the atmosphere at the time when Borya took up photography.
Misiano: And so there was your series Suzi etcetera, from the early 1980s, for which you could hands have been charged with making pornography. And your Crimean Snobbism series from 1982, in which you and your friends are depicted on a carefree vacation messing around and interim out the nearly idiotic mise-en-scènes; couldn't yous say that in this series, you lot're taking on "Western poses"?
Mikhailov: I would say these were exercises in liberation.
Misiano: Only the series was created during the Soviet catamenia?!
Mikhailov: Yep, it was even earlier perestroika. But I showed that people had already prepared themselves for another way of life; they had already begun living it.
Misiano: Now, information technology seems, is the correct time to talk nigh Instance History. In these dramatic images, once again you challenged yourself to show the new post-Soviet life. I remember after you lot first exhibited this series that you were very concerned with how ethical information technology was to make this work and exhibit information technology. Merely I recall that it makes no sense to come back to this topic at this point. What I would like to draw attention to, given this line of our conversation, is the fact that in Case History, you, in your constant quest to swoop into life, reached, possibly, the maximum depth. Merely over again you non only show images of reality but also enter into a kind of relationship, implicating your protagonists—the homeless of Kharkov—in some sort of activeness.
Mikhailov: When Vita and I were shooting that serial, information technology made me think of the American Low, when the American authorities actively recruited photographers and commissioned them to photo what was happening, to capture these experiences for history's sake. I was motivated past this precedent: I felt that it was of import to photograph what was happening. And then yes, of grade, in the new poverty, I saw a new protagonist. Of course at that place had been drunks on the street earlier, and homeless people, simply they were less noticeable, there wasn't as large a concentration of them. Yet it was difficult to approach them because Lodge, with a capital S, tracked your every movement, equally we mentioned before. The reason I was engaging with them was because information technology wasn't possible to photograph them stealthily—that would accept been impolite and unethical. Communication was necessary. There arose a need to overcome some inner resistance—if you can communicate with them, then it means yous tin can cross some sort of boundary.
Misiano: Although your motivation was photography, you lot arrived at a detail code of ethics, a new manner of living. You felt that the new protagonists required a new approach to the work, and this in turn causeless a new kind of human relations.
Mikhailov: Yes, that's true. Besides, in those years, anybody could suddenly detect themselves in such a situation. Vita and I were lucky, but it might have been otherwise. Hence the social barriers between u.s.a. and them were very relative. For that reason photographing these people required a tremendous amount of empathy and respect on our function.
Misiano: You've spent many years living in Europe. Have y'all been able to feel life here as deeply and profoundly as y'all were able to in your home state? And are you lot able to interfere with life here, to play with it every bit much?
Mikhailov: At that place'south no question here: the difficulty of photographing in the Due west is my lack of knowing the language.
Vita Mikhailov: Information technology's not just a matter of linguistic communication. It'due south a matter of context. Your place is there: you know it and understand it. Borya takes fantastic photographs of Berlin and it will probably go articulate later on that no one else has captured such a Berlin.
Mikhailov: Yes, of course at home I have a improve sense for the changing times, the rise of something new—and this has always been important to me. Although non too long ago, a year ago, it was easier for me to photograph in Berlin since I felt a glut of data back habitation. I wasn't feeling annihilation new. But when all of the political events began in Ukraine everything changed again. We'll travel dorsum at that place shortly and peradventure volition encounter something new at that place.
Vita Mikhailov: As a matter of fact, after making Case History, between 2000 and 2010 nosotros completed a very skilful series called Tea Coffee Cappuccino, which we and so compiled into a book (2011). It reflected that new situation, which replaced the transitional 1990s.
Misiano: I recall that serial: it showed the streets of Kharkov, its markets and flea markets. And while it was clear from the photographs that a prosperous life was still far abroad, they projected a tremendous amount of great positive free energy. It was a bright contrast with Example History, and it definitely represented a new period of post-Soviet life. Although you lot did bear witness what that epoch ended with in your 2013 serial dedicated to the protesters in Maidan [Square, Kiev], which was exhibited at the Hermitage in Leningrad in 2014 equally role of Manifesta 10. Once over again, you showed these two themes that we've been discussing today: an organic element of life that reveals itself from behind the shell of reality, and how that inner life takes on the veneer of a social performance. In this work, the Maidan protest movement appears in a sort of dark spectacle, almost gothic, controlled by irrational forces. These photographs show the fragility of the norms and conventions ruling the social order, how hands they give ascension to something dark and frightening.
Mikhailov: Yep, I tried to accentuate all of this through the exhibition. But I have to say, the people at Maidan sensed all of this and worried about it. It was articulate that they were preparing themselves for something; they remained in tense apprehension. And of course in large part this was the foreboding sense of war. People were very worried about it and I worried alongside them.
Vita Mikhailov: Don't forget, these photographs were taken in Dec, before the encarmine culmination of events. [The protests eventually led to the Ukrainian revolution in February 2014.] Fifty-fifty and then at that place was a fire called-for in the square, and smoke was ascension, just people were but warming themselves around it. At that place were a lot of foreign things at that place. That's where Borya photographed a person who ended upward being one of the first victims. He was the outset person to die at Maidan.
Mikhailov: And there were thousands of people in that location! Ultimately, the photographer needs to get lucky; what'south of import is the moment of photographic luck, though of grade with reference to this state of affairs information technology sounds somewhat sacrilegious. I'm non talking about mysticism, but some kind of inevitable event. When you're open to life, information technology responds to you lot. That is what an intuitive possibility of photography is—to clamber deeper into the depths of life than what you see on its surface. I tin't say what this is and how information technology occurs, but that's how information technology is.
All photographs courtesy the artist
Misiano: But isn't the camera e'er an extension of your gaze, which is diving deeply into life?
Mikhailov: Yeah, but it'southward important to go along in mind that without the camera this diving would be impossible.
Misiano: On the other hand, you always trusted chance. Let's recall your serial from the belatedly '60s and early on '70s, Yesterday'southward Sandwich—your early experimental series—to which, insofar as I sympathise, you've been returning conceptually of late. In those works you lot randomly placed one image onto another, not knowing in accelerate how it would plow out. And it ended upward existence extremely evocative.
Mikhailov: I can't explain it in theoretical terms but this has e'er interested me. Photographic accident may exist more interesting than a consciously constructed collage. I was recently thinking about this. You photograph one subject, so another, you place them between ane another and this unintentional connection turns into a story near life in its entirety. And this is all borne from chance, and this chance is photography.
Translated from the Russian by Elianna Kan. This interview was first published in Aperture, effect 220, "The Interview Result," autumn 2015.
Source: https://aperture.org/editorial/boris-mikhailov-on-liberation-vulgarity-and-chance-in-photography/
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