Miroslav Tichy & Julia Margaret Cameron

Miroslav Tichý (b. 1926) was inspired mainly by the everyday moments of the 1960’s up to the 90’s in his Czech hometown Kyjov. The anonymous subjects in his pictures are mothers, pensioners, shop assistants, students, bathers of all ages, career women and housewives, in cafés, shops, streets and plazas, waiting for the bus, with their legs crossed on a park bench, in an intimate conversation. – anonymous portraits are a tribute to woman in many guises. The non-perfection of the photos, the haziness, the blotches and asymmetry evoke the early photographic experiments and explorations.

While studying painting at the Academy of Art in Prague in the late 1940’s, Tichý was troubled by the totalitarianism of the era. He was constantly involved in conflicts with the communist regime that was for social realism instead of modernistic and expressionistic ideals within the arts. Step by step, he retreated from the art scene and society in general. He spent several years alternately in prison and in mental institutions, and over the years he became successively more radical in his antipathy, challenging norms and contradicting society’s preconceptions of an orderly life, living in isolation as a result. But he never ceased to express himself artistically. He gave up painting and took up photography.With cameras he built himself using cardboard, bottle tops and Plexiglas he caught everyday moments in his home town. Afterwards, he processed and ‘improved’ many of his photos by filling in the motifs with a pen where he felt his composition technique was flawed or by creating elaborate mounts he made for his photographs.