Miroslav Tichý: Screenshots

Miroslav Tichý took photographs every day and consistently continued his practice from the art academy: it was an exercise in searching, pursuing and ultimately reproducing the female body.

His analogue photographs show traces and errors that he intentionally caused by making his cameras and enlargers. His images capture the women in grainy patches of light and shadow. They are exposed on roughly cut, light-sensitive paper, which he then often glued to waste paper - gestures that invite them to be read as an integral part of the work.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Miroslav Tichý repeatedly photographed his television screen. In the small town of Kyjov near the Austrian border, where he lived, he was able to escape the confines and prudery of Eastern Bloc censorship and watch the Austrian television station ORF with its Western films and more liberal evening programs.
The shimmering of the television beauties caught in the light appears eerie and wonderful at the same time. The moving images seem even more real than the still photos before the television age.

Lines in the pictures show the screen, and sometimes a light bulb is reflected in the room. In several ways, this series marks a significant moment. One imagines Tichý sitting transfixed in front of the screen, catching changing images, as if he were taking a walk outside, but this time in an elusive world that emphasizes a new category of otherness.

Tichý's practice makes us reconsider the way we interact with media and the images that invade our private lives, penetrating the layers of pointing and close looking. His work is a foray into the future of images, penetrating from reality into the virtual world of computer screens and cell phones.

Author of the text: Céline Mathieu