If you are near Tate Modern, take the opportunity to look at the powerful exhibition by Boris Mihailov. It covers just two walls of a small room but in other respects the number of images on one of the walls and the scope of the objective may lead to the conclusion that this exhibition is far from small.
Boris Mikhailov was born in Ukraine in the former Soviet Union in 1938. He trained as an engineer before turning to photography and is today one of the most successful and well-known photographers from the Soviet era. His work very much in the tradition of of Concept-Art and social documentary photography.
Mikhailov used photography for over 40 years to record and try to understand everyday life in the Soviet Union. Over this period, his work has help bring to life the realities of work and living in a repressive system and, latterly, the decline and aftermath of that system. Much of this portrait is intimate, focusing on his own life as an artist in an unsympathetic environment, his family and friends. Mikhailov has sometimes taken inspiration from the Soviet regime itself: at one time, he took to hand-colouring his images, referencing (as well as providing an antidote to) the way Soviet propaganda tried to brighten the dreary life of its subjects. On one image, he handwrote, “Everything here is so gray in gray that there isn’t even anything to colour.”
After the fall of the USSR, Mikhailov has attempted to explain photographically the complex transition to new freedoms. Ironically, although he escaped censure during the Soviet years, he was attacked for his portrayal of the homeless in the late 1990s “after” the Soviets. In this project of more than 500 images, he systematically took pictures of homeless people and soon gained their trust. He described it as a critique of the “Mask of beauty” of the post-Soviet era.
His most famous early work was the "Red Serie", in which he mainly used the colour red, to picture people, groups and city-life, and this is the first part of the exhibition at the Tate currently. Mihailov's objective is ambitious: he sets up a contrast between the images on the two Walls to illustrate the pervading atmospshere of the communist and post-communist periods primarily by the use of colour imagery. For photographers, this is a distinctive approach: the use of colour as the the most important among a number of organising elements in making a political statement.
The communist period collection comprises around 70 images hung as a huge rectangle on sone wall and in which the pervading colour in these images is red. No surprise there, perhaps, as red was the colour ubiquitously adopted by the communist regime. But one is immediately struck by the sheer extent to which red pervaded communist society. So throughout these images of all aspects of everyday life under an oppressive regime, we see bright red swimsuits, lipstick, sheets, blood, signs, typography and signs, These images show how virtually all important aspects of life was dominated by this colour symbol of the pervading regime and how the regime seeped into life and the way it was lived. They also point to the contrast between the bright colours and the dull reality of everyday life.
Of course, colour is often considered as superficial and this is Mikhailov's point. The regime attempted to control all aspects of life and the most visible symbol of this was the colour red. Yet we see how this was surface while the essence of life continued much as it does elsewhere.
The post-communist images (titled “At Dusk”) are much smaller in scale and completely different. Taken at dusk in his home city of Kharkov following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he uses twilight to record a society in transition and to evoke childhood memories. These are dark, brooding images, mostly from what appears to be a low angle and predominantly blue or toned or hand coloured blue. It is difficult to make out the subject in many of these images.
Mikhailov proposes a monochrome visual language to deal with this new social reality. The photographs are tinted blue, both to make them appear 'old' and to refer to the 'blue hour' of twilight. At dusk also refers to Ukraine's deprivation during the Second World War, which the artist experienced as a child. Few photographic records survive from this period, so Mikhailov has constructed his own history as a substitute. At Dusk is both documentary and a conceptual project.
So this exhibition has set up a clear visual contract between the regime and post-regime period. While red was stamped on life under communism, it was superficial and life continued with some degree of certainty - not that everyone liked the certainty. Mikhailov's vision of post-communist society is bleak and uncertain. Ultimately, we are forced to see the continuities as well as contrasts between these two historical periods.
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