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If you haven't heard of him yet, you are sure to soon: homemade camera maker, stalker of all women in his small hometown in Kyjov, Czech, mysterious picture maker, photographer extrodinare: Miroslav Tichy. Pictured above & below, you can see many examples of Tichy's home studio & homemade cameras, as well as examples of those many images he made in his years walking around Kyjov over and over again.
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And while all of this is interesting, it isn't the work neccessarily, or even the cameras he made, that interest me so much about Miroslav Tichy, but the converstaions they have started. Does his work merit recognition?
In an essay about Tichy from the Tichy Exhibition Catalog at the ICP, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev writes:
“One of the main problems of a society of communication is the simplifications and the quest for the definition/clarity of the messages. Thus it is the ‘high resolution’ and the HD nature of visual culture today that itself creates a problem of visibility; overvisuality, too much detail, destroys visibility. Tichy’s images look more alive because you are very aware of their materiality.
Low definition, the fact of being somewhat obscured in one’s vision, allows you to see better because there is more space for the viewer’s projections and the activity of interpretation. To see a crowd as a crowd is more open and relaxed than seeing exactly where each member of the crowd is going and what each of them is doing. A certain purposelessness of vision, a lack of intent and of factual information, allows a space to the viewer.”
Miroslav Tichy: with texts by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Roman Bauxbaum, Nick Cave, Richard Prince, and Brian Wallis. Co-Published by International Center of Photography, NY & Steild Publishers, Germany. 2010.
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Christov-Bakargiev's understanding of Tichy's work gives me hope.
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To see more of Miroslav Tichy's work & learn more about his approach, you can visit his website, here.
Or more about his exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York this past Spring, follow this link, here.
