“There’s silence between us now.”
One of the great photographers of our time looks back on his life and the images that inspired him.
“This silence somehow defines what’s real and what’s not real. Can someone who sees the silence understand what’s what?”
Boris Mikhailov’s (b.1938 in Ukraine) uncompromising and merciless visual language has made him one of the most important artists in contemporary photography. He has influenced generations with his explicit critique of Soviet society and his raw exploration of everyday life, sexuality, despair, poverty, and mortality. He and his wife Vita live and work in Kharkiv and Berlin today.
In 1971, Mikhailov co-founded the Vremya group, an underground art collective exploring experimental forms of photographic techniques and methods, which later formed the basis of the Kharkiv School of Photography. He was the head of the photography department of Panorama, the Ukrainian Union of Experimental Photography, from 1987 until 1991. In 1993, he spent a year in Berlin, sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Organisation (DAAD). He was a visiting professor at Harvard University in 2000 and a professor at the Leipzig Academy in 2002-2003.
Mikhailov has received many prestigious awards, including the Coutts Contemporary Art Award (1996), the Albert Renger-Patzsch Prize (1997), the Goslarer Kaiserring Award (2015), the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (2000), the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2001). In 2000, his book Case History won the prize for best photography book at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France, and the Kraszna Krausz Book Award in London. In 2021, his slideshow installation Temptation of Death (2017-2019) was awarded the Shevchenko National Prize, the first official recognition of Mikhailov’s work in Ukraine.
Mikhailov’s work has been shown in numerous solo exhibitions at such institutions as the Ukrainian Pavilion at Venice Biennale (2007 and 2017), Tate Modern, London (2010), MoMA, New York (2011), Berlinische Galerie (2012), Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2013), PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv (2019), Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden (2020), Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2022), Palazzo Esposizioni, Rome (2023), and Fotomuseum Den Haag, The Hague (2024).
Boris Mikhailov was interviewed by Marie Teztlaff in connection with the opening of the exhibition UKRAINIAN DIARY – Photography by Boris Mikhailov from 1966 to today at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen, Denmark, in September 2024.
Camera: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Edited by: Jarl Therkelsen Kaldan
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2024
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling.
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