ICA Quickfire: Boris Mikhailov

Artist Boris Mikhailov is in conversation with Simon Baker, Senior Curator of International Art and Photography, Tate Modern. Born in Ukraine in 1938, Mikhailov’s challenging photographs are uncompromising documents of his close surroundings in post-communist Eastern Europe after the demise of the Soviet Union. 

Working since the mid-1960s, Boris Mikhailov has explored photography’s full range of possibilities. One of the most influential photographers living today, he has tirelessly investigated photographic techniques, producing a body of work that bridges modernist, conceptual and documentary styles.

Boris Mikhailov is the recipient of the 2015 Goslar Kaiserring Prize, the 2012 Spectrum International Prize for photography and the Citibank 2001 Photography Prize. He has had exhibitions at major art institutions in Europe and in the US: Tate Modern, London (2016); Museo MADRE, Naples; Camera, Italian Centre for Photography, Turin (2015); Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2013); Berlinische Galerie (2012); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011); and Kunsthalle Wien (2010). Mikhailov's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Tate Modern and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Stedeljik Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Foto Museum, Winterthur; Kunstmuseum, Basel; Berlinische Galerie, Berlin; Sprengel Museum, Hanover; Neue Pinakothek, Munich; Ludwig Museum, Cologne; and Albertina Museum, Vienna. 

Simon Baker is Tate’s first Curator of Photography. Since his appointment in 2009 he has worked on acquisitions, displays of the permanent collection and exhibitions at both Tate Modern and Tate Britain, and in advisory roles for Tate St Ives and Tate Liverpool. Major exhibitions on which he has worked include Performing for the Camera (2016), Conflict, Time, Photography (2014) and William Klein + Daido Moriyama (2012).

With translation by Alexander Kan

With thanks to Dilyara Allakhverdova and Elchin Safarov