


This summer in Paris I made the obligatory trip to the Centre Pompidou. While I was there (in late July) they were exhibiting a collection of Miroslav Tichy photographs.
For those of you not familiar with Tichy, he was a Czech artist who is celebrated for his eerie, voyeuristic portraits of women.
After the communist overthrow in Czechoslovakia in 1948, Tichy and other artists were severely censored. Tichy did not take this well at all; he became a hermit and took no care what so ever in his appearance, causing members of his community to label him a derelict critic of 'the system'. In this time, Tichy designed and manufactured his own camera from scraps, and used it to take thousands upon thousands of photographs of women.
The effects of his homemade camera on the photographs cannot be aptly described. They are innocent in their lack of sophistication, yet there's an underlying message that is not completely clear. Tichy would use his photos as coasters, bookmarks and decorations to get 'the perfect look'. Once this look was achieved, he would create a frame for it.