The special thing about Boris Mikhailov as a book maker is that he thinks of and develops photography in sequences, in spaces and cuts, in the forms of its montage.

Viewed as a whole the books and book drafts, which often only exist as one original copy, create a retrospective of a very unique and intimate kind.

This publication presents, in facsimile, Mikhailov's well-known artist's books Krymskaja Fotomanija (Crimean Photomania) and Mountains, each of which is 128 pages and which are here supplemented by 80 pages of informative, illustrated text.

Boris Mikhailov is seen as a chronicler of the history of his Ukrainian homeland: the everyday life of the so-called little people on the street, on the beach, at dances anywhere that the politic becomes visible in the private. Using this material Mikhailov develops comprehensive questionings on the conditions of human existence as well as on the history and decline of the USSR and the consequences of this.

Ukrainian documentary photographer Boris Mikhailov (born 1938) is internationally admired for his intense, clear-eyed depictions of his homeland, the Ukraine--most famously, his portrayals of the everyday struggles of the bomzhes, the homeless, a class that dramatically enlarged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Using this raw and emotive material, Mikhailov touches on themes ranging from the living conditions in post-communist Eastern Europe and the fallen ideals of the Soviet Union to the harsher trials of human existence. Although deeply rooted in a specific historical context, his work also narrates more accessible, personal threads of humor, lust, vulnerability, aging and death.