Boris Mikhailov. Bücher / Books

The special thing about Boris Mikhailov as a book maker is that he thinks of and develops photography in sequences, in spaces and cuts, in the forms of its montage. Viewed as a whole the books and book drafts, which often only exist as one original copy, create a retrospective of a very unique and intimate kind. The artist s books Krymskaja Fotomanija ( Crimean Photomania ) and Mountains , each with 128 pages, are shown here in facsimile, interrupted by 80 pages of illustrated text. Boris Mikhailov is seen as a chronicler of the history of his Ukrainian homeland: the everyday life of the so-called little people on the street, on the beach, at dances anywhere that the politic becomes visible in the private. Using this material Mikhailov develops comprehensive questionings on the conditions of human existence as well as on the history and decline of the USSR and the consequences of this.