Miroslav Tich?

Miroslav Tichý

In England and Wales, we have a law that forbids ‘upskirting’ – surreptitious photography of any person (the law is not confined to women) with the intention of viewing their genitals or buttocks, with or without underwear ‘where the purpose of the behaviour is to obtain sexual gratification, or to cause humiliation, distress or alarm.’

If illegal acts can said to have patron saints (maybe patron sinners?) Miroslav Tichý was undoubtedly the man to front the Voyeur Rights Front. He had trained as an artist in Prague, and was, the sources say, considered to be a dissident in the Communist era. He died in 2011, and spent most of his life in his hometown, a constant source of low-level annoyance and police activity. Even without a specific law to prevent his snapshotting of scantily-clad women at the local swimming pool, he was recognised as a sex pest.

Of his technical methods, Tichý said, "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." With badly-made cardboard cameras (how do they work at all, I wonder?) he certainly got close.

On a positive note – may I be forgiven for it – his work is a monument to all those moments when men are taken aback by the beauty of a passing woman showing, perhaps, a little more of her body than she anticipated: those moments when Mrs D turns to me and tells me she knows what I’m looking at.

And it is sometimes debateable territory, though no man should ever assume that exposure is intentional. But I have a memory of auditing one day in an office of a dozen people or more, and a young female accountant in a low-cut, loose-knit top and no bra leaning closer than felt comfortable to me. I developed a sudden interest in the column of figures on the other side of the desk… And, frankly, I felt exploited.

There was a fashion, 40 years ago, for glamour models to shoot ‘flashing’ images in public places, and at least one top-shelf magazine ran a regular column of such shots. The style lives on – a model I worked with last year told me she’d been approached by a website specialising in the style. She didn’t accept a booking.

But there’s a big difference between stealing beauty, and beauty willingly offered, and for most people, the latter is better in every single way. To quote Hannah Gadsby, from her ‘Arts Clown’ radio series, ‘consent is so hot!’ (She was talking about Edouard Manet’s 1856 painting, Olympia. Well worth listening to.)

So there we are: skirting – if you’ll pardon the word – the edge of good taste, and the law. This seems to me to pose more than a few questions for those of us who seek female beauty to photograph, and men walking down the street. And it leaves only one question still to be asked:

Why is there not a parallel law in Scotland?

I honestly don’t know whether it’s because it’s not a problem, because it can be dealt with adequately by other legal means, or to protect the national heritage of jokes about the kilt.