Poppy: Trails of Afghan Heroin
By Paul Loomis for ASX, November, 2012
The list of locations and scope of coverage in Poppy: Trails of Afghan Heroin is comprehensive. Poppy claims to trace the Afghan the entire recent history of the opium trade, to describe trafficking routes and opium’s impact on millions of people. It claims to do all of this on an enormous scale; across 13 countries and with more than 17 years of on-the-ground reportage. This massive project is allegedly accomplished by only two people: Robert Knoth and Antoinette de Jong. However, the book delivers on its promise. Knoth and de Jong’s photographs and text reveal complex networks of clandestine commerce with skill, sensitivity, and compassion.
The the book begins in Afghanistan, where desperate poverty coupled with a corrupt political environment allow the country to produce 93% of the world’s opium and gain 54% of its GDP from trading it, usually after it has been refined into heroin.
REVIEW: Robert Knoth & Antoinette DeJong – “POPPY: Trails of Afghan Heroin” (2012)
From Case History, 1999
Boris Mikhailov: A New Metaphysician
By Helen Petrovsky
If we were to define photography today, we would have to posit its essential anonymity. To be more precise, we would have to rethink the very conditions of its theorizing: it is no longer “my” photograph that has to be redeemed by being set against the flow of time or the grand narratives of history. (And such, we remember, was Roland Barthes’s project.) It is “nobody’s” or, better still, “whatever” photograph that is likely to take its place in theorizing.
This radical shift in the attitude towards photographic representation has been made possible by artists such as Boris Mikhailov. His art which defies all traditional notions of the “artistic” seems to indicate the emergence of a new subject of perception: it is neither the individual nor the mass, but something that, prompted by philosophical reflection, I would rather call community. And precisely this community (or
BORIS MIKHAILOV: “Boris Mikhailov: A New Metaphysician”
Spotkanie z Davidem Goldblattem. Prowadzenie Adam Mazur.
David Goldblatt (ur. 1930) jest jednym z najwybitniejszych współczesnych fotografów-dokumentalistów. Na zapis zmian zachodzących w Republice Południowej Afryki, tworzony przezeń od sześćdziesięciu jeden lat z perspektywy zaangażowanego uczestnika wydarzeń, składają się zasadnicze dla historii fotografii książki i wystawy.
Ron Haviv documented the disintegration of Yugoslavia from 1991-2000.
Arts and Culture: MoMA presents “Case History”, the new series by Boris Mikhailov. An unparalleled truth of the circumstances of people living in Ukraine in the 90s who have been left homeless by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
ASX CHANNEL: Boris Mikhailov
From Case History, 1999
A Terrible Beauty
By Sue Hubbard
Boris Mikhailov is sixty-three, has dyed black hair, a white moustache and a young wife. Born in Kharkov in the Ukraine, he has recently exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery, just been awarded the Citibank Photography Prize and is now showing his work, Case History, which consists of over 400 photographs taken in the Ukraine, at The Saatchi Gallery. For anyone with a taste in postmodern irony, there is plenty to be found here. For Mikhailov takes pictures of the bomzhes, the homeless down and outs, victims of the economic and social collapse in the former USSR. But Boris Mikhailov is no Bill Brandt or Don McCullin capturing life’s gritty realities with a clear humanist agenda, nor is he an objective eye simply documenting what he sees from behind his lens. Rather he is a director, a creator of mise en scènes, who seeks out the alcoholic,
BORIS MIKHAILOV: “A Terrible Beauty”
The Opening Scene From the Photographer’s Fellini-Inspired Film Debut El Monte features supermodel Natasa Vojnovic, actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach, musician Melissa Auf der Maur and the haunting voice of Elisa Silver. Click the link above to learn more about the film.
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