Boris Mikhailov pays his subjects to pose for him, often exposing their ravaged bodies with their tattoos, scars, bulging bellies and sagging breasts. These are photos of human wreckage, variously drunk, mad, glue-sniffing, filthy, delusional, impoverished, sick, hysterical and defeated, sloping towards death in post-Soviet Russia.

Mikhailov has defended himself against charges of voyeurism, arguing that it is better to document and draw attention to the suffering and degradation of his subjects than to pretend it doesn’t exist. The harsh realism of these works can be seen as an ironic retort to the airbrushed deceptions of the Soviet-approved ‘Socialist Realism’.