I CAME ACROSS Miroslav Tichý's work in a book I found in a store on Bond St. in NYC, two three years ago.  At first I didn’t know what I was looking at.  I didn’t know if I was looking at photos that had been thrown on the floor and walked on by their taker, and scratched and gnawed and peed on by the taker’s cat.  Jeez, they looked abandoned, found filed away, discovered torn and washed up, rejected, dismissed, folded and cornered like they were used to level the leg of a wobbly table.  I didn’t have time to read the introduction, and didn’t see the portrait of the author of these “terrible” photographs.  I bought the book and put it in the bag with other photo books I bought that day.  Books by Ed Templeton, Terry Richardson, Dash Snow, Peter Sutherland, Ryan McGinley, and Roe Ethridge.  I figured I’d get around to looking at them more in a month, and had the bag of books sent upstate to my library in Neon, New York.  Twelve months later I finally opened the bag and “discovered” Tichý.  I had a revelation, baby.  I thought a young guy had taken old photos.  I should have answered my own question…DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?  The answer was, and always will be, no.

The book is in my lap and I’m comfortable in my chair.  I have some time and I can start at the beginning.  Everything is right when everything is wrong.  This guy is a professional amateur.  He’s ninety in body and nine in the head.  The guy never grew up.  He’s almost grown.  He reminds me of Bo Diddley.  He reminds me of Soupy Sales.  He reminds me of Swanson Dinners and bird’s-eye views.  I remember my mother demonstrating food products at the Stop & Shop, and think about Tichý watching her as she slathers a layer of Miracle Whip on a slice of Wonder Bread.  I can’t see it clearly, but I think about David Hemmings in the movieBlowup, when he’s straddling Vanessa Redgrave and fucking her with his camera.  The Japanese guys who take pictures in the park of couples having sex.  Carlo Molino’s Polaroids.  Snapshots that I found of German nudists from the Thirties in big black albums.  Almost any snapshot really…especially ones from Brownie cameras…the ones my sister took of fellow girl scouts camping and staying in tents and sleeping in white underwear and taking showers under rain barrels and singing and hugging around campfires.  Sigmar Polke’s photo essay of himself with a girlfriend, spending a weekend in a tub in Paris. Casual, passed around 3x5s for the wallet, dime store frames.  Bellocq’s Storyville.  Ruff’s cyber-porn.  Hans-Peter Feldmann’s collection of women’s knees.  My own description of the 8-track photograph I wrote in 1977.

 

1)    Original copy.
2)    The rephotographed copy.
3)    The angled copy.
4)    The cropped copy.
5)    The ...