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Miroslav Tichý has been taking photographs with cameras he made himself out of materials he found lying around his studio. He made a system of lenses out of old eyeglasses and Plexiglass. When asked whether it was functional, Tichý replied: “Of course it worked. When I do something, it has to be precise. Of course it worked imprecisely.” “That was perhaps the art,” he added, laughing. “Then I grind the lens with various sandpapers: first, course sandpaper, then finer and finer …, until you can see through it beautifully. And then what? It needs to be polished. That isn’t a problem: you take toothpaste, mix it with cigarette ash, and then you polish it. And that’s what I photographed with.”

“For the body of the telephoto lens he used paper tubes or plastic drain pipes. He often put several lenses in them, which he fixed with glue or asphalt. He also focused with a children’s telescope: from a board he made a wooden holder and mounted the camera on it. The telescope was attached to the holder with dressmaker’s elastic at the appropriate distance from the camera lens, so that the picture on the film was in focus. The whole thing looks like some kind of weapon. In a similar way, he also made very complicated cameras. From cardboard and plywood he assembled the body, sealed it with asphalt from the road and painted it black. From two empty spools of thread and dressmaker’s elastic he assembled the rewind mechanism, a sort of pulley system, to which he attached the shutter. The shutter was made of plywood with a little window cut through it. Depending on the tension of the dressmaker’s elastic the shutter flipped through the camera quickly or slowly, exposing the film for a shorter or longer period, It’s hard to believe that he could make such subtle, impressionistic pictures with such a clumsy instrument.”

Excerpt from the text “Tarzan Retired”by Roman Buxbaum in: Miroslav Tichý, © tichyocean, 2006

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