By Boris Mikhailov
Published by Steidl, 2004 – Gift from a private donor –
Location: Studio Sakse – Chiang Mai, Thailand
Or, Perversion of Repose
Rarely has anyone photographed reality in such an unprettified way as Boris Mikhailov. He captures the unadorned and the natural; in pictures devoid of aesthetic exaltation, he concentrates on people and their living conditions. On his journeys through Russia, Germany and his Ukrainian homeland, Mikhailov has equally observed the poor, the well-to-do, the outcasts and the homeless. Look at Me, I Look at Water was composed in 1999 at the suggestion of the Heiner Mller-Society when Boris Mikhailov’s name was found in one of Heiner Mller’s notebooks. With this book Mikhailov is continuing, thematically and conceptionally, what he began with his artist’s book Unfinished Dissertation in 1985. The photographs are accompanied by handwritten Russian commentaries, which together give the impression of a private album which narrates stories from a chapter in the artist’s life.
“This was a time in my life of much travelling—from East to West, and back again—and it coincided with a certain loss of identity. It was a time in which moral qualities seemed shaken: the focus of my attention altered, latching onto the possibility of moral changes. The gaze which searches over the surface of things held sway over a more analytical response to the visual. I feel that this book may be of interest, trying as it does to reflect the initial period associated with the processes of emigration. The pictures describe a range of unstable states, and also the intensity of some obscure quest, a quest which is also a sort of experiment.”
– Boris Mikhailov
