Photographic Ethics in the Work of Boris Mihailov

By Alla Efimova, Art Journal, Summer 1994, pp. 63-69

Conceived at the time of the Great Terror, Boris Mikhailov was born in 1938. It is not surprising, then, that the photographic career of this Ukrainian Jew is driven by the struggle with fear, on the one hand, and the search for truth, on the other. Fear of life that can suddenly turn against you, fear of betrayal and violence, fear of losing ground in a society as shifting as quicksand, and the truth—the separation of one’s voice from the chorus of hypocrisy, the courage to look beyond the safe inertia of the everyday, the desire to rub one’s eyes clean and clear. Born in 1938, a person with integrity could not help becoming a heretic.