Miroslav Tichý
Screenshots
Edizioni Periferia, Lucerne, 2023
in collaboration with
Tichy Ocean Foundation, Zurich
Softcover with specially folded dust jacket, thread stitching
256 pages, 240 × 330 mm
German, English, Czech
ISBN 978-3-907205-45-7
Published alongside the exhibition Miroslav Tichý – SCREENSHOTS at the Galleria Edizioni Periferia, Lucerne (26.08.–28.10.2023). In collaboration with Tichy Ocean Foundation, Zurich. With an accompanying text by Céline Mahieu.
After studying at the Academy of Arts in Prague, Miroslav Tichý (1926-2011) withdrew to a life in isolation in his hometown of Kyjov, Moravia, Czech Republic. In the late 1950s he quitted painting and became a distinctive Diogenes-like figure. From the end of the 1960s he began to take photographs mainly of local women, in part with cameras he made by hand. In the 1970s and ’80s, Tichý took pictures of his television screen. Since he lived near the Austrian border, he was able to escape the confines and prudery of Easter Bloc censorship and watch the Austrian television channel ORF with its western movies and more permissive late shows. In retrospect, this body of work seems to anticipate the dissolution of the photographic image through mobile phones and social media.