Miroslav Tichý (; November 20, 1926 – April 12, 2011) was a photographer who from the 1960s until 1985 took thousands of surreptitious pictures of women in his hometown of

Kyjov Kyjov (; german: Gaya or Geyen) is a town in Hodonín District in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 11,000 inhabitants. The historic town centre is well preserved and is protected by law as an urban monument zone. Ad ...

in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

, using homemade cameras constructed of cardboard tubes, tin cans and other at-hand materials. Most of his subjects were unaware that they were being photographed. A few struck beauty-pageant poses when they sighted Tichý, perhaps not realizing that the parody of a camera he carried was real. His

soft focus In photography, soft focus is a lens flaw, in which the lens forms images that are blurred due to spherical aberration. A soft focus lens deliberately introduces spherical aberration in order to give the appearance of blurring the image while ...

, fleeting glimpses of the women of Kyjov are skewed, spotted and badly printed — flawed by the limitations of his primitive equipment and a series of deliberate processing mistakes meant to add poetic imperfections. Of his technical methods, Tichy has said, "First of all, you have to have a bad camera", and, "If you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world." During the

Communist regime in Czechoslovakia Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

, Tichý was considered a

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established Political system, political or Organized religion, religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and ...

and was badly treated by the government. His photographs remained largely unknown until an exhibition was held for him in 2004. Tichý did not attend exhibitions, and lived a life of self-sufficiency and freedom from the standards of society. Tichý died on April 12, 2011 in Kyjov,

.Hughes, H. S. (2011)
Miroslav Tichy, subversive photographer and voyeur, dies at 84
''Photo District News'' (April 13, 2011). Retrieved on April 14, 2011.

Early life

Miroslav Tichý was born in 1926 in the village of Nětčice, part of the town of Kyjov (now

South Moravian Region The South Moravian Region ( cs, Jihomoravský kraj; , ; sk, Juhomoravský kraj) is an administrative unit () of the Czech Republic, located in the south-western part of its historical region of Moravia (an exception is Jobova Lhota which trad ...

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

. He was an introverted child who did well in school. Although Tichý is regarded today as an

outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates e ...

ist because of his unconventional approach to photography, he studied at the

Academy of Fine Arts The following is a list of notable art schools. Accredited non-profit art and design colleges * Adelaide Central School of Art * Alberta College of Art and Design * Art Academy of Cincinnati * Art Center College of Design * The Art Institute o ...

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

, and for a time seemed on the path to becoming an esteemed painter in the modernist mode, working in a style reminiscent of

Josef Čapek Josef Čapek (; 23 March 1887 – April 1945) was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word "robot", which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Čapek. ...

. After the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, students at the Academy were required to work in the

Socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

mode, drawing workers in overalls rather than female models. Tichý refused, stopped working and quit the Academy. He was then required to perform his

compulsory military service Conscription (also called the draft in the United States) is the state-mandated enlistment of people in a national service, mainly a military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it continues in some countries to the present day un ...

. When he returned to Kyjov, he lived with his parents on a small disability pension, and painted and drew for himself in his own style. The Communist regime in its paranoia saw the independent Tichý as a

, kept him under surveillance and tried to "normalize" him, bringing him to the State psychiatric clinic for a few days on Communist patriotic holidays such as

May Day May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice. Festivities may also be held the night before, known as May Eve. T ...

to keep him out of the public eye. In the 1960s he began to disregard his personal appearance, wearing a ragged suit and letting his unkempt hair and beard grow long. At about this time he began to wander around town with an intentionally imperfect homemade camera, taking clandestine photographs of local women. Following the 1968

Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia refers to the events of 20–21 August 1968, when the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was jointly invaded by four Warsaw Pact countries: the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Rep ...

, private property was

nationalize Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...

d. In 1972, Tichý was evicted from his studio, his work thrown into the street. He stopped drawing and painting and concentrated only on photography, working in the disorderly conditions of his home. Of the transition, he says, "The paintings were already painted, the drawings drawn. What was I supposed to do? I looked for new media. With the help of photography I saw everything in a new light. It was a new world." In 1985, Tichý stopped making his photographs and again concentrated on drawing. His non-photographic body of work includes 100 to 200 oil paintings and a vast number of drawings. As with his photographs, in the past he destroyed an unknown number of such works.

Approach to photography

During the years he wandered through Kyjov taking photographs with his crude cameras, the tall, shabby Tichý was tolerated by the townspeople but regarded as an eccentric. He shot about 90 pictures a day, returning to his disordered home to develop and print them. Homemade telephoto lenses allowed him to work unnoticed at a distance from his subjects. He frequented the streets, the bus station, the main square, the park across from the town swimming pool, stealing intimate glimpses of the women of Kyjov. Although he was not permitted to go to the pool, he could photograph undisturbed through the wire fence. The fence often appears in his pictures, its presence adding a suggestion of forbidden fruit. According to a review by R. Wayne Parsons published in ''The New York Photo Review'', :We see women photographed from the rear, from the front, from the side; we see their feet, legs, buttocks, backs, faces, as well as complete bodies s when drawing a nude at the Academy we see them walking, standing, sitting, bending over, reclining. There are a few nudes, though the poor image quality sometimes makes it difficult to determine if we are looking at a nude or a woman with not much on. ..Whatever eroticism is present is limited to that of the voyeur; these women are not inviting us into their world. Tichý's pictures were created for his own viewing pleasure, not for sale or exhibition. Each negative was printed only once.

Artistic aspects

Tichý's subtle photographs use themes of movement, composition and contrast, but the main theme is an obsession with the female body. Technically, his pictures are full of mistakes that compound the built-in limitations of his equipment — underexposed or overexposed, out of focus, blemished by dust in the camera, stained by careless darkroom processing. Tichý explains, "A mistake. That's what makes the poetry."

Equipment

Tichý made his equipment from materials at hand. A typical camera might be constructed from plywood, sealed from the light with road asphalt, with a plywood shutter with a window cut through, operated by a pulley system of thread spools and dressmaker's elastic. A homemade

telephoto lens A telephoto lens, in photography and cinematography, is a specific type of a long-focus lens in which the physical length of the lens is shorter than the focal length. This is achieved by incorporating a special lens group known as a ''telephoto ...

might be constructed from cardboard tubes or plastic pipes. He made his own lenses, cutting them out of

Plexiglas Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) belongs to a group of materials called engineering plastics. It is a transparent thermoplastic. PMMA is also known as acrylic, acrylic glass, as well as by the trade names and brands Crylux, Plexiglas, Acrylite, ...

, sanding them with sandpaper, then polishing with a mix of toothpaste and cigarette ashes. His

enlarger An enlarger is a specialized transparency projector used to produce photographic prints from film or glass negatives, or from transparencies. Construction All enlargers consist of a light source, normally an incandescent light bulb shining thou ...

combines sheet metal, two fence slats, a light bulb and a tin can.

Printing and mounting

Once a picture was

printed Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...

, Tichý might scissor off unwanted parts to improve the

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

. Particularly successful images were pasted onto cardboard, or backed with other paper to prevent curling. He often drew lines with a pen or pencil to reinforce the subject's contours, or to heighten an image's expressiveness. He might decorate the margins with hand-drawn designs.

Conservation

The works were unnumbered, untitled and undated. Tichý kept no catalogue and had no room to properly store his negatives or prints. Once he had printed a picture, it was cast aside, dropped haphazardly about his home, exposed to dirt and damage, rats and insects. In 1981, Roman Buxbaum, a former neighbor befriended by Tichý when Buxbaum was a child, returned from exile in Switzerland. His family had long been owners of paintings and drawings by Tichý, and now Buxbaum discovered the photographic work, which had been kept a secret. Buxbaum began an effort to collect and preserve the artist's deteriorating photographs. He says that over the next 25 years it was his good fortune to be the only person to see, collect and document Tichý's work. Tichý made him presents of bundles of photographs, and Buxbaum bought more bundles from Tichý's neighbor and "surrogate mother", Jana Hebnarová, who has looked after Tichý since his mother's death and been appointed his heir. In 2006, Buxbaum said that he believed his to be the most complete collection of Tichý's photographs, and that he had placed part of it with galleries for sale on commission, with the intention of making it available to museums and collectors to "bequeath it to the world of art". In 2009, it was announced that Tichý had severed all ties with Buxbaum and the Tichý Oceán Foundation's website. In a notarized statement dated 22 January 2009, Tichý states that he made no agreement, written or oral, with Buxbaum to propagate his works, that Buxbaum exploits his works without authorization and violates his copyright, and that only he, Hebnarová and his lawyer have the right to decide on the use and propagation of his works.

Recognition

As part of Buxbaum's conservation efforts, he made a documentary about the artist's work and life, ''Miroslav Tichý: Tarzan Retired'' (2004). Tichý's work was largely unknown until Buxbaum's collection of his photographs was shown at the 2004 Biennial of Contemporary Art in Seville. Tichý's work won the

Rencontres d'Arles The Rencontres d’Arles (formerly called ''Rencontres internationales de la photographie d’Arles'') is an annual summer photography festival founded in 1970 by the Arles photographer Lucien Clergue, the writer Michel Tournier and the historia ...

2005 New Discovery Award, and Buxbaum set up the Tichý Oceán Foundation on behalf of Tichý, then 77, to preserve and exhibit his work. In 2005, he had a major

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...

at the Kunsthaus in Zurich, another at the

Pompidou Centre The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

in 2008. In February 2010, Tichý had a solo show at the

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP), at 79 Essex Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, consists of a museum for photography and visual culture and a school offering an array of educational courses and programming. ...

in New York City. The exhibition featured 100 photographs, the film "Miroslav Tichý: Tarzan Retired," and two large vitrines exhibiting dusty and grimy piles of photographs, homemade cameras, lamps, and rolls of undeveloped film. In its review, The ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' thought his anti-modernist style was representative of the nonviolent subversion practiced by Czech students and artists under the Soviet regime, and called his photographs an "uncanny fusion of eroticism, paranoia and deliberation" that is "mildly disturbing ut alsointensely fascinating".

Critical interpretation

An essay in '' Artforum International'' describes Tichý as "practically reinventing photography from scratch", rehabilitating the

, manipulated pictorial photography of the late 1800s, :...not as a distortion of the medium but as something like its essence. What counts for him is not only the image – just one moment in the photographic process – but also the chemical activity of the materials, which is never entirely stable or complete, and the delimitation of the results via cropping and framing. Director Radek Horacek of the Brno House of Art, which held an exhibition of Tichy's photographs in 2006, describes them thus: :They are all very careful observations of women from Kyjov and of everyday trivial activities. But soon you realize that these trivial situations such as someone sitting on a bench, women waiting for a bus, someone taking a T-shirt off at a swimming pool, are somehow extraordinary. Tichy managed to give this banality a feeling of exceptionality and rarity. Just part of a female body in his pictures can look very esoteric. There are so many magazines that offer much more nudity than Tichy but his photographs are different. A woman's tights between a knee and a skirt or a swimming costume in his pictures look somehow mysterious.

Selected solo shows

*2019: "''A Figure Drawn''

Robert Heald Gallery,

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...

, New Zealand *2017: "''Photographs 1960–1990''

Robert Heald Gallery,

, New Zealand *2013: “''City of the Women''”
Zephyr

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's 2 ...

, Germany *2013: “''Homage to Miroslav Tichý''”
Prague Biennale

*2012: "''L'Homme à la Mauvaise Caméra''"
Pascal Polar Gallery

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

, Belgium *2012: "''The Artist with the Bad Camera''"
Moscow House of Photography

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

, Russia *2011: "''Sun Screen''"
Horton Gallery

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

*2011: "''Miroslav Tichỷ, Retrospettiva''"
SI Fest
Savignano sul Rubicone, Italy *2011: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''", Braunschweig University of Art, Braunschweig, Germany *2011: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''"
Wilkinson Gallery

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

*2011: "''Les formes du vrai / Forms of Truth''"
City Gallery Prague

*2010: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''"
International Centre of Photography

, United States *2009: "''Miroslav Tichỷ. Mirograph''y"
Ivorypress Art Space

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, Spain *2008: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''",

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

, Musée national d’Art Moderne,

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

, France *2008: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''"
Kunsthaus Bregenz
KUB Billboards,

Bregenz Bregenz (; gsw, label= Vorarlbergian, Breagaz ) is the capital of Vorarlberg, the westernmost state of Austria. The city lies on the east and southeast shores of Lake Constance, the third-largest freshwater lake in Central Europe, between Switze ...

, Austria *2008: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''"
Museum of Modern Art (MMK)

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

, Germany *2007: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''"
Taka Ishii Gallery

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, Japan *2007: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''"
Beijing Art Now Gallery

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

, China *2007: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''"
Beijing Art Now Gallery

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

, China *2006: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''"
Brno House of Art

Brno Brno ( , ; german: Brünn ) is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno has about 380,000 inhabitants, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic ...

*2005: "''Miroslav Tichỷ''"
Kunsthaus
Zurich, Switzerland

References

Bibliography

*Pascal Polar (ed.), ''Miroslav Tichý: L'Homme à la Mauvaise Caméra''
Artvox éditions
& Éditions Jannink, 2012, *

Gianfranco Sanguinetti Gianfranco Sanguinetti (born 16 July 1948, Pully, Switzerland) is a writer who was a member of the Situationist International (SI), a political art movement. He is Teresa Mattei's son. Biography Sanguinetti was deported from France in 1971 an ...

(ed.), ''Miroslav Tichý: Les formes du vrai / Forms of Truth''. KANT Publishers, 2011, *Brian Wallis (International Center of Photography, N.Y.C.) (ed.). ''Miroslav Tichý''. Steidl, 2010, *Roman Buxbaum (ed.). ''Miroslav Tichý''.

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König Buchverlag, 2008, *

Quentin Bajac Quentin Bajac (born 1965) is a French museum curator and art historian specialising in the history of photography. He is the director of the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in Paris. Bajac has held positions at the Musée d'Orsay (1995–2003 ...

, (ed.). ''Miroslav Tichý'',

: Editions du

, 2008, *Roman Buxbaum and Taka Ishii Gallery (eds.). ''Miroslav Tichý''
Foundation Tichý Oceán
2007, *Douglas Hyde Gallery (ed.), ''Miroslav Tichý''.

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

: Exhibition Catalogue, 2008. *Roman Buxbaum and Pavel Vančát (eds.). ''Miroslav Tichý''.

: FotoTorst, 2006, *Roman Buxbaum, ''Miroslav Tichý''
Foundation Tichý Oceán
2006, *Tobia Bezzola and Roman Buxbaum(eds.). ''Miroslav Tichý''.

: DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag, 2005,

External links

Tichý Oceán Foundation site
including images
Exhibition: Miroslav Tichý at Michael Hoppen Gallery, London
several images

several images at cirkusworld.com
Photo collection - YouTube
about 9 minutes
Video: Miroslav Tichy
QuickTime, about 4 minutes, in Czech
Jihomoravske venuse - South Moravian Venuses - video (2010)Worldstar, a film about Miroslav Tichý

Artist Miroslav Tichý
ARTLIST - database of contemporary Czech art {{DEFAULTSORT:Tichy, Miroslav 1926 births 2011 deaths People from Kyjov Czech contemporary artists Outsider artists Czech photographers 20th-century Czech people 20th-century Czech painters Czech male painters Academy of Fine Arts, Prague alumni 20th-century Czech male artists