Friday Photo: Cardboard Camera

“The mistake is part of it, it is poetry,” the eccentric Czech artist Miroslav Tichý has said. “And for that you need a bad camera.” By “bad,” 83-year-old Tichý doesn’t mean that fuschia Le Clic you took to summer camp, he’s talking pure DIY: shoebox cardboard, tin cans, toilet paper rolls, elastic bits. And the lenses? Plexiglas rounds polished with toothpaste and ashes. Tichý’s remarkable homemade cameras, including the one pictured above, are on view along with approximately 100 of his haunting photos (heavy on the candid snaps of women and spookily distorted landscapes) in an