Miroslav Tichý (Kyjov, Czech Republic, 1926-2011) lived the absurd of art and its social functions in almost all of its stages. Or, at least, two of its ends. As a graphic artist and member of the Academy of Fine Arts of Prague, he experienced the processes of normalization of the communist regime, leading him from a promissory career as painter to a decade or so of psychiatric institutions which ended in indigence from the early 60′s to his death in 2011.
Indigence however meant to Tichý the discovery of photography. With handmade cameras constructed out of waste (paper tubes, metal plates, tin cans, plastic or glass bottles as lenses and, in some cases, parts from “formal” photographic cameras thrown away by their owners), the artist shot hundreds of photographs daily which he later lousy developed, also with rudimentary chemical processes. Sometimes he would also frame his prints with drawings or some other waste materials. Truth is after that he utterly forgot about his work and his photographs and these were accumulated into his attic to count several thousands.
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