Viscidity - The photographs in Boris Mikhailov's Viscidity were taken and sequenced in Kharkov in 1982, but are only now being published in book form. Reproduced at their original scale, we have added translations from Russian to English. In addition, the book features "I was walking through a field," an original bilingual essay by Mikhailov illuminating the history of the work and written especially for this edition.
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\nViscidity, one of the first three critical image-text works, was completed after Horizontal Pictures and Vertical Calendars (1978-1980) and shortly before Unfinished Dissertation (1984). As Mikhailov states: "At first, the texts tautologically repeated what was visible in the image, as if they were only drawing attention to the photograph (the first book)... gradually the texts changed and became poetic and deeper (the second book)... then I added quotes in addition to my own thoughts on photography (the third book)."
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\nViscidity was produced at a time of "deep political stagnation. Nothing is happening - nothing is interesting at all... There was a kind of certainty that society was on the threshold of something unknown, that everyone was anticipating. Many people felt that."
