The Glaz (eye) Gallery is revealing young photographer Ivan Mikhailov, 31, whose work is nearly entirely focused on youth. “I haven’t completely come out of it yet” jokes this big cheeky boy while pointing to a series on children’s playground.
Glaz gathered all of his previous work about children and outer space. Mikhailov revisited the playing fields of the major industrial city of Tcheboksary located 700km east of Moscow and not far from his birthplace. He took pictures of the remains of his childhood, including rudimentary metal and wood constructions representing outer space. Missiles, rocket ships, satellites all symbolized the Soviet specialty, the space program. “All Soviet children dreamt of being astronauts” he nostalgically mentioned. The pictures were nearly all taken at night, “with very long shutter speeds, up to one half hour. As such, the children who might have been in the picture, disappeared.”
