Background information
"In his new artist book, 'Temptation of Life', Boris MIKHAILOV combines in a large-scale dialogue earlier photos with new photographs, which were created in 2017 in a Kiev crematorium of the Soviet era and nature-overgrown environment.Other venues are decaying corners of Eastern and Western European cities, bedrooms and hospitals, gardens and night bars. In over 200 photographic diptychs, Boris MIKHAILOV creates a book-changing perspective on reality, a passage between times. Part documentary and partly staged, he works out historical, human, technical and cultural relationships, while consciously creating a distance to the narrative, to the reality of what is to be seen, through playful-formal correspondences between the motifs.
Already with earlier artist books such as 'Case History' and 'Unfinished Dissertation', Boris MIKAILOV created classics of the genre 'Photobook', which dealt with the lives of Ukrainian homeless people or everyday life under the Soviet regime.With 'Temptation of Life' he draws an almost philosophical conclusion about the spirituality of everyday life and the transience of all flesh and consumption waste, about sex, life and death." (freely translated publisher's note, © Holzwarth, 2019)
Über den ukrainischen Fotografen Boris MIKHAILOV (*1938 in Charkiw)
Fotobücher von und mit Fotoarbeiten von Boris MIKHAILOV
- Book design
- Hans Werner HOLZWARTH
- Format
- Pb. (no dust jacket, as issued), 22 x 32 x 3,5 cm., 424 pp., 418 color ills., text language: English, Ltd. to 500 copies