CASE HISTORY

Boris Mikhailov
CASE HISTORY

Photographs: Boris Mikhailov

Publisher: Scalo

478 pages

Pictures: 431

Year: 1999

Price: 200 €

Comments: Hardcover under dust jacket, 24 x 17,5 cm, color photographs. In very good condition other than some wears to the dust jacket. Text in English. Cited in 'The Photobook: A History, volume II' by Parr and Badger.

Boris Mikhailov, whose Unfinished Dissertation was published in 1998 by Scalo, focuses in Case History on what he believes is the result of the break-up of the former Soviet Union. Though Mikhailov considers the conditions of his particular place of residence for over fifty years crucial to his work, he is not providing a recollection of the specific history of Kharkov, Ukraine. Rather, he brings out the "condition humaine" in this city characterized by industry and factories, by newly installed Coca Cola billboards as well as socialist architecture. Kharkov provides the backdrop for Mikhailov's moving portraits describing the decay of both social structures and individual lives. We witness street kids taking drugs, adults in search of food, trying to re-install their social self by cleaning their bodies in the artist's own apartment. Despite devastating poverty, the women and men in Mikhailov's images look back at us with great dignity. Their eyes express an unbroken will to survive in a social system that has broken down completely. Very warmly Mikhailov depicts the harshness of everyday life in a society not as far away from ours as we might think.

- Text from the backcover