Sweden 2000. The Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography 2000 has been awarded to Boris Mikhailov (Ukraine) on the grounds that he is unquestionably the leading photographer with a Soviet background today... At this point in his over thirty year long career, Boris Mikhailov continues to develop his great theme- his narrative of the wreck of the Soviet utopia. Though the exhibition included work from his entire oeuvre, this catalogue depicts his photographs from a series entitled Dance, never previously published. Dance is a serene reflection on the distractions and pleasures of the Russian people in their strenuous everyday life. They whirl as they dance, seemingly carefree. Dance exudes optimism and humanism in difficult and demanding times. Born in the former Soviet Union Boris Mikhailov (°1938) lived and worked for several decades in his hometown Kharkov, Ukraine. He received an education as an engineer and started to teach himself the practice of photography. Today he is one of the most successful and well-known photographers, who already was actively working in soviet times. His work very much is influenced in the means of Concept-Art and Social-Documentary-Photography. At the end of the 1960s he had his first exhibition. After the KGB found nude-pictures of his wife he was set off his job as an engineer and started to full-time work with photography. He shot a series of everyday-life scenes-documentation.