Diary

Diary compiles several decades of Boris Mikhailov's personal photographic archive into a single, loosely chronological volume. It mixes family pictures, self-portraits, staged tableaux, and the raw documentary images of Soviet and post-Soviet life for which he is best known.

Published by Walther König, the 430-page book reproduces material largely drawn from Mikhailov's own working archive rather than a single project. The images are tender, banal, and explicit by turns. Its diary structure, image following image without the framing of a single thematic series, mirrors how Mikhailov has long treated photography as a running, unfiltered record of his own life rather than a set of discrete bodies of work.

Mikhailov (b. 1938, Kharkiv) worked as an engineer in Soviet Ukraine before turning to photography. He developed a body of work that used staged nudity, poverty, and everyday absurdity to document life under and after Communism. His best-known series in this vein is "Case History" (1997-98), an unflinching account of the homeless and destitute of Kharkiv after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His work has been shown widely in international museums and remains central to postwar Eastern European photography.