Boris Mikhailov

About

The works in Intimacy may be seen as a counterweight to Mikhailov's best-known series, Case History, a documentation of the lives of down-and-outs in Kharkov. As an examination of Mikhailov's private life, Intimacy is not at all about social confrontation, but it enshrines the same theatrical sense of exposure as the Ukrainian portraits. Many people have questioned Mikhailov's role in the forced confessions of the body in Case History; but as Intimacy shows, the compulsion to document the "dissolution of beauty" (Mikhailov's words) is central to his work as a whole.