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Salt
Lake
Our
new selection for The Globalist's PhotoGallery is Boris Mikhailov.
In Salt Lake, his 1986 photographs provide a breathtaking thowback
to life in the USSR. The photographer went to a small Ukrainian
town to capture a panoply of stocky men and bikini-clad women —
all bathing on a sea shore crowded with smokestacks and brick warehouses.
In
this town, a factory spills untreated water directly into the open
sea. Believing these waters to have healing powers, the locals enjoy
swimming in it.
The
book itself was designed by Mr. Mikhailov using Russian paper and
binding materials.
About
Boris Mikhailov
Boris
Mikhailov, born in 1938 in Charkov, Ukraine, was first considered
an artist when a photograph of a naked woman bathing was found amongst
his private documents at the company where he worked as an engineer.
However,
the
photographer was only considered an artist when he adopted the official
modes of expression institutionalized by the authorities. There was
little room for private matters.
Every
photograph beyond these boundaries was declared amateur photography.
And thus Mikhailov often introduced himself as an amateur —
in order to express that he was an artist. Many of his photographs
were created outside the recognized categories.
They
were private and were not intended for publication, but were acknowledged
amongst his private circle of friends in Russia, which constituted
an art community of its own.
About
the book
The
social and political context which engendered a response to Mikhailov's
work quite the opposite to that in the West, is fundamental to understanding
the 1986 series Salt Lake.
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Today,
Salt Lake can be seen from a different perspective:
the Soviet Union is no more — and the criteria
which produced this kind of photography no longer apply.
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It
is also of course significant in any understanding of the artist's
history. The Salt Lake photographs are one of his bodies of work
which were created privately — and which document a world removed
from any ideal.
"Salt
Lake" is very Russian, to the extent that it was characteristic
to show personal worlds distinct from power structures and to portray
those people who, in defiance of all adversity, lived their lives
to the full.
Mikhailov's
work encompasses both the tragic and the comedic aspects of life
in a similar vein to the literary work of Fyodor Mikhail Dostoyevsky.
He is in the tradition of generations of Russian artists who have
explored the insoluble connections between artistic creation and
the inner man.
Photographs
that document an epoch
With
this sequence of photographs Boris Mikhailov documents summer days
and bathing pleasures at a lake near Slavjansk in the Ukraine.
It
is the town where his father lives and the environment bears the
scars of the local factories which produce soda water.
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"Salt
Lake" is very Russian, in that it shows personal
worlds distinct from power structures — and portrays
people who, in defiance of all adversity, lived their
lives to the full.
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The
industrial process accounts for the high salt content of this inland
water and it is this factor which attracts the old and aged, hoping
for some alleviation or even cure of medical conditions.
The
water is said to be good for the skin and this has established the
dirty lakeside promenade, where now and then freight trains are
being shunted, as a health resort.
This
industrial context is not consistent with the idea of a summer holiday.
But in the same way that concerns about pollution are disregarded,
any notion of a bathing beach is ignored.
There
is a stretch of water, the heat of summer, and the possibility to
escape from the sun by bathing in the salt lake, all topped by the
illusion that this is good for body and soul.
Seeing
Salt Lake from a different perspective
Today,
Salt Lake can be seen from a different perspective: the Soviet Union
is no more and the criteria which produced this kind of photography
no longer apply. But the harmonious life which had been possible
outside the state ideal is also no longer possible.
These
photographs as documents of an epoch. They are also born out of
Mikhailov's vision and he reminds us that, as Dostoyevsky claimed,
"beauty alone saves the world" — even if that beauty
only survives in our memories.
Adapted
from a text by Friedrich Meschede
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