The Photographic Art of Miroslav Tichý

[johnastovall]

The strange and enigmatic work of Czech photographer Marsolav Tichy.

Detailed article on Tichy by Geoff Dyer.

[Murph]

Yeah, a pervert whose stuff is considered "Art": From the Guardian article:
Put as simply as possible, he spent his time perving around Kyjov, photographing women. Ideally he'd catch them topless or in bikinis at the local swimming pool; failing that, he'd settle for a glimpse of knee or - the limitations of the camera meant the framing was often askew - ankle.

I'd have whipped his @ss if I caught him photographing my daughters. Another example of a pervert, or perversion masquerading as ART, which automatically is supposed to both give it a pass and cow those who might stand up and tell the world its bad, wrong, and The Emperor has No Clothes. Dude looks like a pervert, he looks like the kind of guy I spend my work day putting in prison for Child molestation.

Also piss poor focus, etc makes it "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaart!": That is the least of the pictures' defects: most are under or over-exposed as well. Michael Hoppen is currently exhibiting a small selection of Tichý's at his London gallery. I asked him how many great Tichý's pictures there were in total. "In focus?" he replied, as if that were a personal preference, and not a prerequisite for photographic adequacy. "Maybe two or three hundred." In some of these, the ostensible subject is all but blanched out of existence by a blaze of intruding light.

And more on the "Artist": Tichý's responded by retreating to his hometown of Kyjov. In 1957, during the cultural thaw ushered in by Stalin's death, he was slated to participate in a group exhibition from which he suddenly withdrew. Suffering from the delusion that his colleagues were part of a fascist conspiracy, he had a complete breakdown that led to his being committed to a psychiatric clinic for a year.

[Jenny Z]

Yeah, I don't get it.

[johnastovall]

Apparently the Centre Pompidou gets it.

[rosie]

I glanced at the pictures & didn't see any blatantly under age looking women - so I'm confused a little by Murph's reaction. I liked the pictures, but I am attracted to edgy (maybe some consider ugly) photography. Lissette Model is a fave of mine.

[johnastovall]

Ah yes, Lissette Model, Diana Arbus's mentor, also edgy....

[Murph]

Ah yes, Edgy, or "how far can I push the envelope without getting in trouble for it?" I'm not much impressed with her work at all, nor that of her student Diane Arbus. Photos of freaks, wierdos, degenerates, and people in bizarre situations do not appeal to me at all.
Lisette Model
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Lisette Model (November 10, 1901 in Wien as Elise Amelie Felicie Stern - March 30, 1983 in New York City) was an Austrian-born American photographer

Lisette Model was born Elise Felic Amelie Stern in Vienna, Austria. Her father was an Italian/Austrian doctor of Jewish descent attached to the Austrian Imperial Army and, later, to the International Red Cross; her mother was French and Roman Catholic, and Model was baptised into her mother's faith. Two years after her birth, her parents changed their family name to Seybert. According to interview testimony from her older brother, she was sexually molested by her father, though the full extent of his abuse remains unclear.

She was primarily educated by a series of private tutors, achieving fluency in three languages. At age 19, she began studying music with composer Arnold Schönberg, and was familiar to members of his circle. "If ever in my life I had one teacher and one great influence, it was Schönberg," she said.

Model left Vienna for Paris after her father's death in 1924 to study voice with Polish soprano Marya Freund. It was during this period that she met her future husband, the French-Jewish painter Evsa Model. In 1933 she gave up music and recommitted herself to studying visual art, at first taking up painting as a student of Andre Lhote (whose other students included Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Hoyningen-Huene). She also took up photography, taking basic instruction in darkroom techniques from her younger sister Olga Seybert (herself a life-long professional photographer), though Parisian portrait photographer Rogi Andre was the person Model credited with providing her primary instruction in camera techniques.

Visiting her mother in Nice in 1934 (she and Olga had emigrated from Vienna several years prior), Model took her camera out on the Promenade des Anglais and made a series of portraits which are among her most widely reproduced and exhibited images. These close-cropped, often clandestine portraits of the local privileged class already bore what would become her signature style: close-up, unsentimental and unretouched expositions of vanity, insecurity and loneliness.

She married Evsa Model in 1937 and the following year they emigrated to join her husband's sister in Manhattan. There she supported herself as a photographer, having work published regularly in Harper's Bazaar by editors Carmel Snow and Alexey Brodovitch. Model eventually became a member of the New York 'Photo League,' which would host her first dedicated showing.

In 1951, Model was invited to teach at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where her longtime friend Berenice Abbott was also teaching photography. Model's best known pupil was Diane Arbus, who studied under her in 1957, and Arbus owed much of her early technique to Model's example. Model continued to teach until her death in 1983.


Public collections of her work are held at the following institutions:

* Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City
* Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
* The Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego

[edit] Source

"Lisette Model" by Ann Thomas, published by the National Gallery of Canada to accompany an exhibition of Model's work which travelled the United States, Canada, and Germany during l990-1992.

Originally Posted by johnastovall

Ah yes, Lissette Model, Diana Arbus's mentor, also edgy....

[studiocygnet]

Originally Posted by Murph

Ah yes, Edgy, or "how far can I push the envelope without getting in trouble for it?" I'm not much impressed with her work at all, nor that of her student Diane Arbus. Photos of freaks, wierdos, degenerates, and people in bizarre situations do not appeal to me at all.

It may not be to your viewing taste, but the people operating at the edges are what has molded and created the artform as it exists today, and will determine the future paths that photography will take. There always has been and there always will be photographers pushing the boundaries at the edge; we may not appreciate them, but we need them all the same.