Renowned Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov is currently showing his work at the Marian Goodman art gallery in New York.
“Refined times,” Recovery of its ongoing work until February 22, 2025, includes early pieces as a slideshow “yesterday’s sandwich” and its latest video work, “Our time is our burden” (2024).
Mikhailov and his wife and creative spouse, the war, spoke to The Moscow Times about the exhibition, their artistic process and the topics emerging in his photography.
Andrei Muchnik: Is it? Does the exhibition have some idea, or was it persuaded and found in the image?
War Mikhailova: It is a deliberate decision. There is the first work, ‘yesterday’s sandwich,’ and the latest, ‘our time is our burden,’ and everything in between – that’s how it was rebuilt. And, of course, space dictates some of it. When it’s a gallery – there’s just a lot we can show.
At the same time, it also depends on this time – when you dictate what is worth showing now and what is no longer felt. Not that it doesn’t work anymore, but just that we don’t feel like dealing with it at this time.
AM: Why are these rows?
WAR: Maybe because right now we’re talking more about Ukraine. That is why the ‘By Ground’ column, created in 1991, has been shown – is the first column made in Ukraine, marking the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of Ukraine. ‘Evening oil’ was shot in the 1990s.
And ‘Lake’ is true from the late Soviet era, 1986. It is up to Slovian – a region located in the midst of our internal concern.
Boris Mikhailov: My name – Boris Mikhailov – itself is associated with the end of the Soviet era.
WAR: He wrote, as a presenter, capturing the Soviet era and the Soviet world view.
AM: Where do you live now?
War: We live in Berlin. And all our children have now moved from Kharkiv to Berlin as well.
AM: Before the war, as I understand, you traveled to Ukraine and worked there many times, right?
War: Yes, we’ve never really thought about real migration. We still have Ukrainian passports, and it only worked that we traveled back to and there. But not anymore.
AM: Do you? Do you see yourself as a Ukrainian artist, a post -Soviet artist? Or maybe internationally or German?
Boris: It’s hard to say. Maybe a Soviet underground artist.
AM: Since we’re talking about Soviet underground, can you tell me about your relationship with the Moscow concept?
Boris: I knew Vladimir Yankilevsky, Erik Bulatov, and Ilya Kabakov – though I knew Bulatov down. But my relationship with Kabakov was very close. He encouraged me to explore the views of what could be done. He pushed me to approach things as if it were looking from above.
From Kabakov, I also learned the importance of joining the text. I was already working with the text, but it was not emphasized. My knowledge and he encouraged me to give a great role, which, in fact, was one of the most important aspects of modern art at the time.
AM: Tell me about your creative process – are you? How does your new series grow?
War: I think we need to start not with a new layer but with the elderly.
Boris is a former school photographer who always carries the camera. Nowadays, everyone has a phone, but he was someone who had a camera with him all the time. When one series ends, the next search begins. Every day, he writes shots at home, but only when one picture stands it attracts its focus.
And then, when you’re out on the road, you begin to see how everything puts in that original view, and that’s how it comes together.
The new series also comes together based on certain internal emotions. There is a constant process of shooting. It’s a kind of process of assembling and mixing objects – created by how you feel – and then the sequence begins to take the form.
Boris: I try to catch, on the one hand, atmosphere, and on the other, the environment is accompanied by a particular head.
WAR: Boris’ the last job, ‘our time is our burden,’ has three parts. The first was shot back in 2019. At that time, there was this situation of uncomfortable, this concern, if you were predicting something. Then came the second part, designed when there was still a suggestion that maybe, maybe only, there was a chance to escape death. The third part is already about the war – it’s 2023, and at that time, we feel the perfect effect of how it is.
Boris: These are diptychs; That’s the way I use it now. Capturing a war without a war itself can only occur through understanding. You just walk on the road, and all of a sudden, you can find something. These are situations without war, but in some way it reminds me of war or awakening the ideas attached to it. I hit more than this in Berlin.
AM: And photos from Ukraine – is it just news?
Boris: Yes, from TV, from Tiktok.
AM: Do you? What about your first job – ‘yesterday’s sandwich’ – Is it? Did you plan this as a slave, or were they intended as individual images?
Boris: These are all unfortunate things, unintentionally captured and then gather together. The idea here is about the transition from mechanical to semantic level. The two slides mounted within the same frame represent a new technological discovery. The key was to find this combination. And this combination, by the way, is something new – a combination that was not available in the movies before.
It is kitsch, a response against authority; The only way to hold it to authority was by creating a kitsch.
AM: Slideshow uses a soundtrack from Pink Floyd’s ‘side of the moon.’ Why this album? Is it? Pictures were taken almost at the same time you were listening?
Boris: The pictures were taken a little earlier, but it was almost the same period.
AM: And ‘Salt Lake,’ What happens there?
It is Sloviansk, in the Donetsk region. It is warm soda water from the pipe, and people bathe in it, it deserves to have healing qualities. It is the Ukrainian ganges.
It is completely safe; My father was swimming there. In the picture you see the kind of ocean resort, though not the ocean resort. It’s this game of being ‘in the middle.’
AM: Why is the 1991 column called ‘with land’?
It was shot from the ground, as if through the eyes of an old woman to walk, near the ground.
That was the beginning of the country [the U.S.S.R.’s] Fall. It was the fall of the whole country – not only the fall of ideological, but the collapse of architecture, of buildings, of everything.
At that time, many people gained a kind of freedom, but with it they came to an economic blow. This series already has some concepts, which are reflected in its use of color. First of all, everything was a browner. In visually, it feels like we have gone down in the past. This was in Kharkiv, but it would be any city.
AM: And ‘in the Dusk series’ – that’s also Kharkiv?
Boris: Yes, the pictures were taken in Kharkiv in the 1990s. It is my fellowship and war. I know, I still remember. It was that powerful feeling I had when there was just a month before the Germans arrived in Kharkiv, less than a week, and we had to leave for Kirov. I remember the great concern that my mother felt and the plane flying under the trace.
AM: War, what role do you play in Tandem?
WAR: I don’t want to answer that. (Smile)
Boris: A homeless series [‘Case History,’ one of Mikhailov’s most famous series, first shown in the late 1990s] It would not be possible without war. Basically we made the column together.
WAR: We only talk about photography 24/7, so my role is.
Boris: War knows everything is there and he takes care of everything – he is an institution in it.
He has connections with a deeper understanding of all Soviet and post -Soviet sessions. This allows him to find and present what has not been shown before, creating something new while continuing with the same method.
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