Miroslav Tichý

Czech Republic, 1926 – 2011

The work of Miroslav Tichý, discovered in 1989 by his neighbor, the director Roman Buxhaum, reveals the unique talent of a figure who steadfastly refused the social, political and personal values of the communist period from its beginnings in 1948 to its end in the late 1980s. Tichý got his start in photography in the mid-1950s, reinventing it and building his own machines and magnifiers from shoeboxes, cans, recycled glass and other discarded materials. His images, captured with manually made machines and improvised optics, offer an extraordinary vision of an eroticized reality, simultaneously real and dreamlike. Tichý’s work was first shown at the Seville Biennale in 2004 and later in a solo exhibition at the Center Pompidou in Paris in 2008.