Visual Propaganda #7 (Mother Russophilia Special): Boris Mikhailov

In lieu of another sickening Liberal hysteria driven censorship push, we celebrate the glorious achievements of Russian artists, starting with the poignantly abject photography of Boris Mikhailov

Many things have happened in the West since Vladimir Putin launched an attack on Russia’s neighboring Ukraine two weeks ago. First, the liberal media and American politicians engineered a sympathy mob that pinned all the blame for the crisis on Putin’s alleged psychosis, usefully obscuring the fact that NATO was warned that their militarizing of eastern border territories would lead to this military conflict by foreign policy experts across the political spectrum for well over a decade. Covid then ended seemingly over night, and libtards that were only 10 days ago wearing two masks and screaming their heads off about “anti-vaxxers” have seemingly lost any and all interest in the Covid cause. And then, predictably, libs started censoring again. Russian state news RT was taken off the air in the West. A university in Milan removed the study of fucking Dostoyevsky from its literature program, before backtracking. Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell, famous for getting honeypotted by a Chinese spy and furiously farting on live TV, called for the expulsion of Russian students from Western universities. And while it’s alleged that Putin is launching a censorship campaign of his own, our claims to “protecting democracy”appear to be thinner than Giacometti sculptures. We reject this censorship push, obviously, and think it’s absurd to hold private citizens accountable for state violence (if that was the case, we as Americans should be living in extreme guilt). We celebrate the myriad achievements of Russian culture, art, and philosophy. I will post some of my favorite Russian artists in the coming days to push back on this ugly liberal panic. – Adam Lehrer

Boris Mikhailov is one of my favorite photographers. Born under the Soviet Union’s rule of Kharkiv, Ukraine, Mikhailov studied engineering in his hometown and discovered photography while working at his day job. Exhibiting work as early as the 1960s, Mikhailov experienced the repressive tendencies of the Soviet Party first hand when after discovering nude photos that he had taken of his wife, the Party had Mikhailov expelled from his engineering job. This was both a blessing and a curse. While it gave him the time to pioneer his aesthetic, a social portraiture photography with conceptual implications, it also made it difficult for the artist to make a living.

Mikhailov’s images are notable for an abjection that is often argued as exploitative by the typically feeble minded art critics. His subjects are often physically deformed or malnourished. Mental illness is either directly captured or hovers above the imagery like a specter. Mikhailov’s work wields powerful social narratives. Before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it functions as a record of the Soviet Union at its end. Lenin’s Soviet dream to usher the world into workers’ paradise had manifestly failed as his vision had devolved into a paranoid surveillance state that was failing to feed its own people.

Most intriguingly, however, is when Mikhailov returned to Ukraine from Berlin after the Soviet Union ended and Ukraine had established itself as a liberal capitalist independent state. Contrary to the triumphant tone most often evoked in regards to the end of Soviet rule, Mikhailov’s vision of liberal Ukraine was complicated at best. In it, he saw something that he’d never seen previously. “There were lots of color advertisements and other signs of the new capitalism,” he said. “But when you looked more closely you could see a new society of people—the homeless.”

Mikhailov succeeds in something that too many contemporary artists fail at: depicting the world with a complexity befitting of reality. Mikhailov is dedicated to the truth. Do you know how fucking rare that is in 2022? Of course you do.

Illustrations:
1. Boris Mikhailov “Untitled” (from the series Look at Me I Look at Water) (2002)
2. Boris Mikhailov “Untitled (from the series Yesterday’s Sandwich) (1966-’68)
3. Boris Mikhailov “Case History” (1988)
4. Boris Mikhailov “Untitled” (from the series Soviet Collective Portrait)
5. Boris Mikhailov “Superimpositions” (late 1960s to late 1970s)
6. Boris Mikhailov “Case History 1998 #45” (2000)
7. Boris Mikhailov “Case History 1998 #454” (2000)
8. Boris Mikhailov “Case History 1998 #288” (2000)
9. Boris Mikhailov “At Dusk” (1993)
10. Boris Mikhailov “I Am Not” (1992)