Miroslav Tichý

So, my dad hands me his American Photo magazine today and shows me this Czech photographer who was born in 1926, has suffered mental breakdowns, endured critics calling his photos "exploitative," and makes his own cameras from trash, i.e., toliet paper rolls, string, tin cans, and other things. "Because his quirky cameras did not have viewfinders, he lacked exact control over composition of images" (American Photo, March/April 2010).



So, like a pinhole. Of sorts.

"not so concerned with formal issues of technique and composition, and are more willing to accept a more slapdash approach to image-making..."

He's nuts and "wild" looking. I really liked a quote of his at the end of the article that says, "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!" And as for people calling his pictures "exploitive," he tells the reader, "the pictures are about discovering joy and pleasure in an oppressive political situation."


Typical Tichý; he really likes females in respose/female legs:


And a few I liked...










So ghostly and spiffy. Especially this last one of Austrian women dancing; the Czech government controlled the TVs, but Tichý was able to pick up some Austrian channels and took a series of pictures. There are a bunch of other pictures, just Google his name and "photography" and you should get a ton. They're awesome.