Photo talk about Boris Mikhailov in the exhibition Ukrainian Diary
Learn more about Boris Mikhailov and the Kharkiv School of Photography with PhD student and Mikhailov expert Olena Chervonik
About Kharkiv School of Photography
In the early 1970s Mikhailov and a group of his friends established a collective for experimental photography, which later became known as the Kharkiv School of Photography. Rather than an actual school, it was a collective search for a visual language in art photography that was developed through conversations and shared artistic reflections during informal meetings. The group used manipulation of the photographic image, collage techniques and hand-colouring. They exhibited only once in 1983, and the exhibition was closed by the communist regime on the opening day. Mikhailov served as the group's informal leader, and together they had a great influence on the artistic developments in photography in Ukraine. Several younger generations have been inspired by the aesthetics of the Kharkiv School of Photography, which still exists today.
One of the most known contemporary Ukrainian artists, Boris Mikhailov started his artistic career as a participant of an informal photographic community, which emerged in Kharkiv in the mid-1960s. Initially meeting at a regional photo club, eight of its members eventually organized an art collective called “Vremia” (Time) to practice and promote a markedly non-Soviet approach to visual culture. Mikhailov has become an indisputable leader of the group and its principal innovator pushing the photographic medium beyond the Soviet aesthetics and ideology.
Placing a particular emphasis on Mikhailov’s contribution, the talk will narrate a history of the Kharkiv School of Photography and its subversive stance towards the dogmas of Soviet realist art.
The events in the exhibition have been created in close collaboration with curator Kateryna Stukalova.
About Olena Chervonik
Olena Chervonik is a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Oxford, writing her dissertation on the early history of photography. Currently Chervonik cooperates with the Museum of Kharkiv School of Photography (MOKSOP) as a curator, academic editor and translator of the series on the history and theory of photography. Previously, Chervonik received her master’s degree in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts in New York and an ABD in Slavic Languages and Literatures and Art History from the University of Kansas.
Chervonik worked as a curator of contemporary art in a number of institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art (USA), Izolyatsia. Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Donetsk, Ukraine), Videonale. Festival of Video Art in Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany) and Spencer Museum of Art in Kansas (USA).
Photo: Mina Sorvino
Read more about the exhibition
UKRAINIAN DIARY – Photography by Boris Mikhailov from 1966 to today
