MoMA presents the United States debut of a “deeply disturbing” Russian photographer
Boris Mikhailov is among the more celebrated artists to emerge from the former Soviet Union since the fall of communism. This is all the more remarkable given that his medium is photography. One of his signature projects, Case History (the original title might be more accurately, if less fluently, rendered as “The History of a Disease”), is a series of 400 pictures of the homeless in Mikhailov’s native city of Kharkov, Ukraine. The Soviet state had ensured that homelessness was virtually nonexistent, but upon his return to Kharkov from a stay in Germany in 1996, Mikhailov was suddenly struck by the extent of societal transformation. The glitzy, all-too-conspicuous hyperconsumption that had become the international image of the post-Soviet world came at a cost: the creation of a parallel underclass whose poverty and misery were at least the equal of the prosperity of the so-called “New Russians” (and “New Ukrainians”).
The first show in an American museum dedicated to Case History, MoMA’s exhibit (through Sept. 5) includes 19 of the 400 shots, billed as deeply disturbing—signs are even posted at the entrances, warning more squeamish visitors to think twice before entering. The photographs themselves are not as shocking as all that, but they do grab your attention. Their very scale is arresting; each photograph measures 93 by 50 inches. The scale varies, so that the figures may be a bit smaller or larger than life-sized, but the images always seem too close for comfort. Mikhailov’s subjects are thrust forward into our personal space and demonstratively uncover for us their breasts or genitals.
“Untitled” from the series Case History 1997-98. Courtesy the artist, Pace-MacGill Gallery, New York, and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
Nudity itself, however, can hardly provoke a modern audience. The choice of subject matter, too, is entirely traditional; from its early years, photography’s function as recorder of “objective truth” has associated it with journalism and social commentary. More interesting and provocative is the artist’s tightrope walk between differing approaches to photography. Much in this show underscores the documentary mode for which Mikhailov is known: the “human,” tilted and apparently unplanned camera angles; uncorrected red eye (unavoidably obtrusive in this large-scale format); night shots crudely forelit, as if taken with an amateur’s flash; and the uniform, “standard” sizing of the photographs. This is reinforced even by how the works have been hung: unframed and unmounted, pinned to the wall with a pair of thumbtacks (the bottom of each photograph curving away from the wall), like casual snapshots on a bulletin board. Such treatment is geared toward defusing the exaltation of art suggested by the museum context. It would seem to urge us to view them as unplanned, spontaneously captured truth.
But in the work of a professional photographer, and even more so in a museum setting, all these are conspicuously considered devices. They manifest not objective documentation but the artistically contrived simulation of documentation. Aggressively choreographed compositions further undermine the photographs’ apparent claim to objective chronicling (especially the series in the “winter” section of the show, grouped on the back wall and given the separate title of Requiem, although this is nowhere indicated).
Of course, there are always authorial choices, even in photography, but image selection, cropping and the like do not strike at the heart of photography’s putative truth-recording abilities. Contrived composition goes beyond unavoidable choices of presentation, making it obvious that the photographer is consciously influencing the source material.
Mikhailov’s subject matter participates in the same inner conflict—in pointedly grubby surroundings, unappealing subjects pull aside clothing to show us scabs, rashes and tattoos. Mikhailov sees himself as representative of the late Soviet intelligentsia, characteristically opposed to the Establishment, and his depiction of the social underclass manifests a traditional opposition stance (the almost stereotypical stance of the documentary photographer). But these works seem more aimed at the aestheticization of the grotesque. Making art from ugliness is an equally defiant rejection of the salon aesthetics that Mikhailov’s generation automatically associates with official Soviet art.
The photographs included in this show were taken over a single year (from spring 1996 to spring 1997) and, as you circle the room, you pass through privation in four seasons. Along with constants of subject matter and the standardized format and presentation of the photographs, this tends toward a harmonious presentation of intentionally discordant material. The approaches taken in the separate works, however, are so various as to undermine that sense of unity. It is as if each shot is influenced by a different aesthetic from the photographer’s inherited inventory of photographic genres. Shots of a scruffy old man in a uniform and undershirt, raising an ax like a flag (a potential Raskolnikov?), or the contrived compositions of the Requiem group, derived from Russian orthodox iconography, clash with pictures designed to look like uncomposed candids. In one of the shots here (although there are others like it in the original series), the photographer includes himself in the frame, looking on intently as his subject bares his rash-covered buttocks. The move introduces the issue of voyeurism, of the potentially disquieting relationship between the photographer and his obviously vulnerable subjects. Elsewhere, the voyeur is only implied by the “exhibitionist” posing for the camera.
Mikhailov’s Case History amounts to an attempt to fuse seemingly incompatible visions of contemporary photography. This is the chief underlying tension of the exhibition and, even if the extent of his success in resolving those tensions remains an open question, it is a fascinating quest.
