Item chiefly consists of photographs of the homeless in the artist's hometown of Kharkov in the Ukraine.

Morel Books is a London based independent publisher specializing in affordable limited edition art books and zines. Challenging and provocative, Mikhailov's photographs document human casualties living in post communist Eastern Europe after the demise of the Soviet Union. They are unflinching and ruthless depictions of poverty and the homeless (also known as Bomzhes) living in the margins of Russia's new economic regime without social support or care. This series presents a simulated wedding between two homeless people often naked and in sexual poses, set amongst their own surroundings."

In the early 1980s, before Glasnost and Perestroika, Boris Mikhailov made this series of photographs in his home town of Charkow, in the Ukraine. Mikhailov is best known for his ruthlessly honest documentation of the problems of Soviet and Russian daily life; this work, which has never been published before, is sometimes gentler.

This volume offers an overview of the career of the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov. The work of Mikhailov is seen through the eyes of filmmaker David Teboul who completed a documentary about the artist in 2010 - Boris Mikhailov: I've Been Here Once Before.

"I, Mikhaylov Boris Andreevich, born 1938, Ukrainian. Father Mikhaylov Andrey Nikolaevich, Ukrainian, born 1909. Mother Mikhaylova Khaya Markovna, Jewish, born 1911. Brother, Mikhaylov Anatoliy Andreevich. The only foreign country I have been to is Poland. I have no criminal record. Now I am employed as a photographer at the House of Political Education (in actual fact I am in charge of cleaning the floors)". In 1985, when the Soviet Union still existed, Mikhaylov created a wonderful series of handcolored and toned photographic prints, integrating philosophical, lyrical or enigmatic statements with pictures of every day life situations. Now that Mikhaylov has become a secret star of the Western art scene -- a "brother" of Ilya Kabakov -- this book shows the poetic power of an artist switching in a staggering way between reality and the artificial. This artist's book is a compelling album of sharp humour, deep sadness and unexpected ruptures that characterize our contemporary lives and our selves.

Since starting out as a photographer in the mid-1960s, Boris Mikhailov (b. Kharkov, Ukraine, 1938; lives and works in Kharkov and Berlin) has built a wide-ranging and strikingly multifaceted oeuvre. A virtuoso of his art, he has explored a great variety of ways of using the medium to paint a picture of his immediate surroundings that is as unsparing as it is ironic. The book--which accompanies his largest exhibition in Germany to date--brings together a selection of works that includes the experimental pictures of his early years as well as his most recent photographs created in Berlin.

An extraordinary project by one of the most influential contemporary photographers working today.