Stealing beauty

For those unfamiliar with the unique body of work by Miroslav Tichý, the approximately 200 photos on display at the Old Town Hall space operated by the Prague City Gallery may seem an outright ode to voyeurism, at once somewhat unsettling and thoroughly engrossing.

The condition of the photos themselves may also come as a surprise: out of focus and poorly printed, folded, tattered and torn, stained and rodent-gnawed. Many of the countless photos that Tichý, born in 1926, produced between the late 1950s and the 1980s have not survived; some were even burnt by the artist as fuel. Seemingly at odds with such careless treatment, however, some of Tichý's prints have elaborate hand-drawn frames.

Since the international art world "discovered" Tichý in 2004 following the inclusion of his photographs at the Seville Biennial, the photographer has become legendary. He had his first solo show in 2005, and with the exception of exhibitions in Brno and Šternberk in 2006, all his subsequent shows until now have been outside the Czech Republic. This is the first exhibition of his work in Prague.

Tichý's work was initially promoted internationally by Roman Buxbaum, who has known Tichý since childhood, when he met the eccentric photographer during a visit to his grandmother in Kyjov. Buxbaum emigrated with his family to Switzerland in 1968, but started coming back to Kyjov for short visits in the 1980s and often spent time with Tichý. He returned again toward the end of the 1990s to make a film about Tichý, and in 2002 began amassing and preserving a collection of Tichý's photographs.

Most of these untitled and undated shots of women and girls were shot surreptitiously in Kyjov, where Tichý has lived since early childhood, with the exception of three years he spent studying as a painter at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Using homemade cameras whose components included shoe boxes, thread spools, toilet paper tubes and lenses polished with toothpaste and ashes, Tichý often shot up to 100 frames a day and printed them haphazardly.

With the exception of a photo of a stream near Tichý's home, the leitmotif of this show is women and girls, whom Tichý would most often photograph from the other side of the chain link fence at the town swimming pool. The photographer also captured these females going about their daily routines: walking down the street, running errands, standing in line, waiting for a bus, sitting on a park bench, eating an ice cream cone, gossiping in pairs or giggling in small groups. Most of the time, Tichý photographed his subjects without their knowledge, but sometimes they were clearly aware of the photographer, and are captured shooting quizzical looks at the camera. Some of Tichý's subjects didn't believe he could have any film in the homemade contraptions he carried around with him.

The photos in the exhibition are mostly grouped by the part of the female anatomy they focus on, and the head or other parts of the women's bodies are often cropped. The only outright erotic photographs in the show, though, are ones Tichý shot from his television screen. Asked in an interview why he photographed women, Tichý, who has called himself "the last classicist," mentioned movement and composition. Indeed, his images are often formally sophisticated, reflecting Tichý's early art training at the academy.

Tichý never expected to exhibit or sell his photographs, and he showed his work to few people. The photographer does not attend his exhibitions and appears to have little interest in his late-in-life international recognition. In a documentary screening at the gallery, Tichý at one point utters, in English and with bitter irony, "I am worldstar." The film, directed by Nataša von Kopp, is titled Worldstar and carries the subtitle: "A film about an old man with no needs and a remarkable past, facing the hype as an artist against his will."

Aside from the myths surrounding Tichý, fierce disputes have arisen in recent years about the control, propagation and sale of his works. His lifelong neighbor and longtime caretaker Jana Hebnarová has begun looking after his interests and trying to protect him from exploitation, she writes. She has set up an official website for Tichý, which has his "official" life story and also presents a notarized statement by Tichý declaring that Buxbaum tried to gain favor with him in order to obtain and exhibit his works without his consent.

A site set up by Buxbaum for the Tichý Ocean Foundation (the Czech term for the Pacific Ocean), tells a different story, posting documents with Hebnarová's signature confirming that Buxbaum was given photographs by Tichý and also bought from her photos Tichý had given her over the years. At the time of the Brno exhibition, Buxbaum admitted to the Czech press that he has no legal agreement with Tichý to sell or exhibit his work.

It is not surprising that the sudden fame of an eccentric artist in his 80s with a history of mental illness and a fondness for alcohol is ripe for exploitation. One has only to watch the film running at the gallery to see that Tichý is mostly bewildered by all the attention and seems agitated by the intrusion into his privacy.

Tichý's furtive photographing of females in Kyjov was probably viewed by many as an unwelcome invasion of privacy, as well, so it is an ironic twist that in recent years the camera has been turned back on the photographer.

Mimi Fronczak Rogers can be reached at
Features@praguepost.com