In my near-constant and endless wanderings through the virtual world, I recently discovered (thanks to Flashbak) the work of Miroslav Tichy, a Czech photographer who remained largely unknown until his photos were finally exhibited in 2004. Known as the "perverted flaneur," Tichy roamed the streets of his hometown Kyjov in the Czech Republic with large, ungainly homemade cameras fashioned out of cardboard, wire, tin cans, and spools of thread. The homemade cameras let small amounts of light leak onto the negatives, giving his work a hazy, dreamlike quality.
His preferred subject matter was women, and all of his shots are candid, voyeuristic photos taken surreptitiously on the street. He was likely able to get away with this because his cameras looked so shoddy most people assumed they were incapable of taking actual photos (see below).
 |
| Tichy, with one of his homemade cameras |
First of all, you have to have a bad camera and if you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world.
This philosophy could just as readily be applied to the type of talentless fame we've come to expect from reality TV and middling pop stars. Hey, it worked for Meghan Trainor. If you can't be good, be bad. But don't just be bad, be the worst.
All of his photographs are untitled and undated, but span a time frame from roughly the 1960s through the 1980s. He died in 2011.
