Art and Memory: Marie Tomanova's Diaristic Self-Portraits

Marie Tomanova’s Self-Portraits 2022–2023 begins with five-by-seven-inch prints on matte paper. The texture invites tactile engagement, as if each sheet holds the essence of its moment. Displayed unframed in a grid at Lasker Contemporary in Berlin, the photographs create a resonant chronology. Tomanova builds her visual diary through repetition and variation without imposing a narrative.

The project spans a full calendar year, starting on 1 January 2022. Tomanova, a Czech-born photographer now based between New York and Prague, approached the series with ritualistic rigor. Each day, she turned the camera on herself, capturing her body, surroundings, and unvarnished states of mind. In the exhibition’s catalogue, Tomanova described the project as "a negotiation with time, with the self, and with the instability of permanence." Curator Ella Fuchs notes that the consistency of these daily images contrasts with their emotional tenor, creating a body of work that evokes "familiarity without stasis."

Tomanova is well-versed in diaristic photography. Her earlier series Young American (2019) documented friendships in the New York art scene and gained attention for its raw sincerity. While Young American focused outward, Self-Portraits 2022–2023 turns inward, examining the artist’s shifting identity. Across 365 frames, Tomanova confronts her image not as an icon but as a mutable surface.

The series employs natural light, with many images taken in her apartment or during travels. These compositions are deliberately undramatic: an open window framing a winter morning, a blurred gesture as Tomanova adjusts the camera, a shadow stretching across her skin at dusk. These visual cues mark time’s passage without external timestamps. Self-Portraits 2022–2023 is uninterested in spectacle but remains intensely communicative. The daily practice of photographing oneself becomes both insistence and inquiry—who are we if we must answer this question every day?

Tomanova’s approach resonates with a lineage of photographic self-representation, recalling Francesca Woodman, who used the camera to investigate identity. However, Tomanova’s images are notably direct. This clarity speaks to a movement in contemporary photography that prioritizes the ordinary as a site of exploration. Scholar Abigail Solomon-Godeau noted that self-portraiture can "unsettle the viewer, drawing them into a dialogue with their own self-perception." Tomanova’s work embodies this idea: the more intimately she portrays herself, the more porous her images become, inviting shared reflection.

The series culminates in December 2022 with a deliberate shift. The final eleven prints, larger at twelve by sixteen inches and printed on lustre paper, alter their visual weight. Photographed during a return trip to her hometown in Moravia, these images juxtapose her adult self against childhood sites, anchoring the project’s meditative arc in a geography of memory.

For viewers, the work’s power lies in continuity rather than transformation. Tomanova’s commitment to daily practice mirrors life’s rhythms: the accumulation of small moments that define us. Critic Martin Kovarik observed that "Tomanova’s self-portraits reject the monumental. Their resonance comes precisely from their refusal to isolate the exceptional."

This approach situates Tomanova within a broader zeitgeist of contemporary art addressing memory and self-construction. In conversation with artists like Zanele Muholi, whose self-portraits interrogate identity, or Sophie Calle, whose narrative-driven projects blend autobiography with fiction, Tomanova’s series adds uniquely diaristic notes. Her focus remains personal yet extends outward to touch on collective experiences of time and self-awareness.

Self-Portraits 2022–2023 reflects a dedication to photography and the act of seeing—both oneself and the world. By compressing a year’s worth of moments into a single body of work, Tomanova invites viewers to reflect on their relationship to time and memory. The exhibition at Lasker Contemporary closes with an empty wall, save for a mirror mounted at eye level. This invites viewers to look not only at her but also at themselves.

As photography navigates its role in documenting identities, Tomanova’s work contributes to the discourse. It reminds us that the camera is not merely a recording device but a means of questioning how we occupy our lives. In doing so, Self-Portraits 2022–2023 reframes the ordinary as a lens for the extraordinary.