Miroslav Tichy

Photography is something concrete, a perception, what you see with your eyes. And it happens so fast that you may not see anything at all! To photograph is to paint with light! The flaws are part of it. That's what makes the poetry. And for that you need a bad camera. If you want to be famous, you have to be worse at something than everyone else in the world!
Miroslav Tichy, excerpted from Dedicated to The Women of Kyjov, published by Walther König.

Born in 1926, the reclusive Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý did not become known outside of the small Moravian town of Kyjov until he was 75 years old, when he was included in the 2004 Seville Biennial by the eminent curator, Harald Szeemann. Since that time, he has garnered shows at such major international venues as the International Center of Photography in New York, where his 2010 retrospective was widely reviewed. Working with remarkably primitive looking home-made cameras and developing materials, Tichy is famed for his blurry, erotic images of local women going about their daily business oblivious of his gaze.

ACTIVE BACKLIST

MIROSLAV TICHY: FORM OF TRUTH
Text by Gianfraco Sanguinetti
KANT
ISBN: 9788074370397 | US $85.00
Pub Date: 8/31/2011
Active | In stock

MIROSLAV TICHY
TORST
ISBN: 9788072153961 | US $27.50
Pub Date: 4/30/2011
Active | In stock

MIROSLAV TICHY: DEDICATED TO THE WOMEN OF KYJOV
Text by Clint Burnham, Roman Buxbaum, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Harald Szeemann.
WALTHER KöNIG, KöLN
ISBN: 9783865604590 | US $80.00
Pub Date: 9/1/2008
Active | In stock

MIROSLAV TICHY - L'HOMME A LA MAUVAISE CAMERA
IDEA
ISBN: 9782916067650 | US $40.00
Pub Date:
Active | Limited Quantity

OUT OF PRINT LISTING

ARTISTS FOR TICHY - TICHY FOR ARTISTS
Text by Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Roman Buxbaum, Adi Hoesle, Michael Stavaric.
VERLAG FUR MODERNE KUNST NURNBERG
ISBN: 9783939738169 | US $37.00
Pub Date: 7/1/2007
Out of print | Not available

MIROSLAV TICHY
Essays by Roman Buxbaum, Pavel Vancat and Harald Szeemann.
TORST
ISBN: 9788072152773 | US $25.00
Pub Date: 8/15/2006
Out of Print | Not available

Miroslav Tichy

"The photographs are blurry, skewed, badly printed and in terrible condition: dog-eared, scratched, spotted and encrusted with who knows what. They all show girls and young women, in streets and public parks, going about their business and mostly unaware of the camera," according to The New York Times' Karen Rosenberg. "Whose work is this, with its peculiar echoes of Gerhard Richter, Richard Prince, Ron Galella, Garry Winogrand and Humbert Humbert?"

Miroslav Tichy: Form of Truth

Text by Gianfraco Sanguinetti
Published by Kant

Hounded by the Czech Communist regime in the 1960s, the controversial photographer Miroslav Tich (born 1926) has today found acclaim for his photographs of women taken with homemade cameras. This handsomely produced Tich monograph is unique among Tichy publications for two reasons: firstly because the photographs, drawn from private collections, are all previously unpublished; and secondly because it is conceived and authored by the Italian former Situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti, who has likewise come into conflict with state authorities, having been deported from France and Italy several times for his work with Guy Debord. The bulk of the photographs in this volume are derived from Sanguinetti's Tich collection, and are prefaced with a lengthy meditation on the photographer by Sanguinetti, who declares his admiration for Tich's personal and artistic disregard for social conventions, and the anti-modernist character of his methods and materials.

Miroslav Tichy

Published by Torst

In the 1960s, Miroslav Tichy (born 1926) began to take photographs of local women in his home town of Kyjov, Moravia, using cameras he made out of scrap. Quietly and surreptitiously working away over the decades, he was discovered by the photo-community in 2004. This volume provides an affordable introduction to his elusive and voyeuristic work.

Miroslav Tichy: Dedicated to The Women of Kyjov

Text by Clint Burnham, Roman Buxbaum, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Harald Szeemann.
Published by Walther König, Köln

After studying at the Academy of Arts in Prague, Miroslav Tichy, born in 1926 in the former Czechoslovakia, withdrew to a life of isolation in his hometown of Kyjov. In the late 1950s, he stopped painting and, during his daily walks, began to take photographs of women with cameras he made by hand. He mounted his prints on handmade frames and added finishing touches in pencil, shifting from photography to drawing. Disregarding the rules of photography, for four decades Tichy created a large oeuvre of poetic, dreamlike views of female beauty.
A former neighbor, Roman Buxbaum, discovered Tichy's hidden work in the 1980s and has been documenting and collecting it ever since. In 2004, the esteemed international curator Harald Szeemann mounted the first solo exhibition of the nearly 80-year-old artist. That same year, Tichy was given the Rencontres d'Arles Photographie Discovery Award and the Kunsthaus Zurich organized a large retrospective. Solo exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art (MMK) Frankfurt followed in 2008. Tichy does not see his exhibitions, for he no longer leaves his house. This beautifully produced, thorough volume collects the work--perfectly.

Artists for Tichy - Tichy for Artists

Text by Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Roman Buxbaum, Adi Hoesle, Michael Stavaric.
Published by Verlag Fur Moderne Kunst Nurnberg

Miroslav Tichy, born in a small Czech village in 1926, was a trained artist with a background in painting and drawing and a 30-year career as photographer (specializing in unauthorized, low-grade pictures of local women--on the streets or in the pool--made with jury-rigged cameras of his own design) when he abruptly ended his artistic production in 1990. Since then, he has avoided the public eye and generally refused to sell his artworks. In this volume, more than 30 contemporary artists contribute works in response to Tichy's: among them we find photographs of alpine snowboarders by Walter Niedermayr, an erotic drawing by Arnulf Rainer, an enigmatic sculptural work and a drawing of a gallerist standing on an artist's head by Erwin Wurm, a hand-drawn score by Michael Nyman, collaged works by Jonathan Meese, a large round acrylic painting by Katharina Grosse, a Surrealistic photo series by Anna and Bernhard Blume, a kittenish diptych by Fischli and Weiss and sundry dark and mysterious works by Thomas Ruff, Andro Wekua and others. The original Tichy images featured here are gorgeous, enigmatic and erotic, and are accompanied by portraits of the artist and his fascinating DIY cameras.

Miroslav Tichy

Essays by Roman Buxbaum, Pavel Vancat and Harald Szeemann.
Published by Torst

After studying at the Academy of Arts in Prague, and working--at some risk--as an abstract painter in Communist Czechoslovakia, Miroslav Tichy turned to a life in isolation in his home town of Kyjov, Moravia. In his fourth decade, in the 1960s, he began to take photographs of local women at the town pool using cameras he made by hand out of scrap and peering through the fence, which imposed its lines on every image. His is one of those incredible stories: Tischy is a driven, fiercely private artist with a large body of work that the world might easily never have seen. But in this case the story ends with the receipt of the Arles Recontres de la Photographie Discovery Award in 2005. Or rather it keeps going, with this collection, among the strangest, most touching contributions ever made to Western art's gallery of bathers.

MIROSLAV TICHY - L'HOMME A LA MAUVAISE CAMERA

Published by Idea

Monograph on Miroslav Tichy?'s unconventional and artisanal (blurred, underexposed photos, taken with handmade cameras) but powerfully evocative work.

After studying at the Academy of Arts in Prague, Miroslav Tich (1926-2011, Czech Republic) withdrew to a life in isolation in his hometown of Kyjov, Moravia. In the late 1950s he quit painting and became a distinctive Diogenes-like figure. From the end of the 1960s he began to take photographs mainly of local women, in part with cameras he made by hand. He later mounted them on handmade frames, added finishing touches in pencil, and thus moved them from photography in the direction of drawing. The result is works of strikingly unusual formal qualities, which disregard the rules of conventional photography. They constitute a large oeuvre of poetic, dreamlike views of feminine beauty in a small town under the Czechoslovak Communist regime.