Marie Tomanova’s New Volume Confronts Identity, Migration, and Belonging

Marie Tomanova recovers a photographic archive from the beginning of her career, challenging the norms of photography with a single 36-exposure roll of film

Water is a testament for transparency 

“I am a homeopathic drop of water in the sea. Not only an eye that observes, but a body that feels. Somewhere between the present and a translucent trace in time. The water touches me, even when I’m not immersed in it,” writes Czech photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková in the foreword to Kate, For You. What follows in Marie Tomanova’s new book Kate, For You seems to be a photographic echo of Jarcovjákovás’ words. Water becomes a metaphor for presence and a constant reminder of the body—it counters, touches, and shapes it. On an artistic level, the addition of water adds both specificity and a sense of play to the photographs. 

“I like to have water in my photographs because I shoot everything with flash. Some magic happens when the water is in there,” Tomanova explains. “In the first roll, for example, with Kate and Odie in the bathtub, you can see the flash reflections in the drops on the wall, on Kate’s back, and in her hair. I have many outdoor shots where people are standing in water sprays. When you take pictures indoors, you are much more limited. The bathtub was intentional.” 

Yet, water also seems to be more than a visual detail, beginning to function as a character, especially when it embraces Kate and Odie as they embrace each other. Its presence suggests a new mode of presenting the self: through the nude body made translucent by the transparency of water. Nudity, a natural consequence of the presence of water, complicates and deepens the intimacy of these images. “The nudity that comes with that isn’t sexual in any way—it’s about being the most you that you can be. When you have clothes on, there’s always an additional identity layer added to the self. Whether it’s fancy, shabby, or formal, there’s always some added meaning. When you strip that away, there’s nothing to hide behind. It’s you in the rawest way of being you.”

Kate, For You: Marie Tomanova against the norms of photography 

Marie Tomanova returns to her creative collaboration with model and fellow Czech Kate Vitamin in her latest photography book Kate, For You, released in April 2025 with Untitled Publishing. Centered around a single 36-exposure roll of film shot in 2017, the book is an ode to the enduring artistic relationship between Tomanova and Kate across time. 

The never-before-seen roll, titled First Roll, Kate and Odie (2025), was the first Tomanova ever shot of Kate, and it occupies the first half of the new book. “It is its centerpiece and heart. I decided to show all thirty-six images because every little moment from that afternoon matters in the same way,” Tomanova explains. “It also raised some questions for me—about going against the grain in photography.”

Until now, only one of those images—frame twenty-four, titled Kate and Odie (2017)—had been shared publicly, gaining wide international recognition and becoming the cover of Tomanova’s debut book, Young American (2019). It showed Kate and Odie, her then-partner, in a bathtub, looking directly at the camera. Yet, when seen in its totality as a series, the roll appears more powerful, revealing a deeper narrative. Its roughness consists of Tomanova’s willingness to embrace repetition and the imperfection of framing. 

“Who am I to say that one image is the image?,” Tomanova asks. “Everyone has different ideas and feelings, and they connect to different moments in that roll. A couple of people even asked me how I would dare to show all thirty-six images. What kind of ego and confidence do I have to show all of them? I never thought of it that way. I’m showing them because they all matter the same way as the photo Kate and Odie (2017). There’s beauty in all these little, raw moments.”

Marie tomanova and Kate Vitamin, a New York-based creative duo with Czech roots

Marie met Kate in the summer of 2017. She had come across her on Instagram and was intrigued by her after realizing Kate was a Czech girl in New York, just like her. “At that point, I had been in the U.S. for six years and couldn’t leave because of my visa. I missed home. Being Czech and growing up with the same things, there’s a familiarity and feeling of belonging that I resonated with,” Tomanova reveals. That first roll of film was originally conceived around Kate and her new kitten, Cashew—a relationship that was meant to capture 22-year-old Kate’s fresh attempt to build a home just a few months after arriving in the United States. “I thought it might be cool to photograph them in the bathtub,” Tomanova tells us, “but the cat didn’t want to go in at all. In the end, it was Kate and Odie who ended up in there.”

According to Tomanova, that introductory shoot with Kate was both revelatory and transformative for her photography practice. It highlighted the need for versatility and, therefore, the fact of being present in the moment. Yet it also revealed Marie’s growing interest in the relationships not only captured in a photograph, but also built through the process of taking a photograph. “I felt connected to Kate and Odie, and I was also seeing their connection. I was touched that they let me into their relationship and included me in their world.”

One roll, a cinematic experience

To show an entire photographic roll from a shoot means to reconsider the balance between movement and stillness. The static nature of a photograph, confined within the edges of a frame, finds freedom through the repetition of similar moments. Encountering these photographs as a sequence rather than isolated experiences allow the viewer to immerse themselves in the tangible memory of that afternoon from 2017. For Tomanova, the cinematic quality not only gave her the chance to experiment with a new artistic medium, but it also invited her to reflect on what cinema can offer that photography alone might not. 

The complete roll became, in fact, the subject of Tomanova’s short movie Kate 2025, in which Kate is asked to look back at her younger self in the thirty-six images, some of which she had never seen before. “I printed all the images, showed them to Kate, and filmed her looking at them. In the movie, she talks about how much she’s changed, how she thought about the world, and who she was back then. She opens up in a very deep and personal way,” Tomanova says. “That’s also why I’ve been so captivated with Kate over the years: she is not someone who tries to hide behind perfection. She’s very open and frank, and she’s not afraid to share who she is.” 

Kate 2025 is presented in juxtaposition with Tomanova’s photographs at her first museum solo exhibition at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, the second largest museum in the Czech Republic, curated by art historian and writer Thomas Beachdel. 

Photography as a relational medium

One might say this book centers on a single person: Kate. Yet what emerges from these photographs is Kate in relationship with Odie or, when she appears by herself, with the photographic eye. It’s impossible to discern the self from the relationships it inhabits. In the introduction to Kate, For You, Beachdel writes about Tomanova’s interest in this quality, stating that “The resulting photograph itself is less relevant to her than the connection and experience of working with others. The photograph is a trace of that interaction.” The still frame becomes a proof or a testament to the relationships Tomanova fosters and nurtures, even subtly challenging the demands for aesthetic perfection that this art form often requires. 

It can be tempting, and perhaps easy, to fall into the trap of wanting to define this duo in traditional terms, relying on the artist-muse definition. Yet, it would be reductive and insufficient. «I don’t like the word muse. It’s a very old word, often used in wrong dynamics, with connotations that I try to stay away from as much as I can,» Tomanova explains. “I would like Kate to be seen as a person who inspires me and is in an equal collaboration with me.” Kate is as present and central to the photographic process as Tomanova herself, and one might even argue that these photographs belong to Tomanova just as much as they do to Kate.

Similarly, when asked about the relational nature of photography, Tomanova reflects on her connection with non-human subjects and whether her process shifts. But even then, there still seems to be a layering of relationality with the self. “I don’t know about other photographers, but to me, it is always about relationships. Even when I photograph places, it is because somehow I relate to them,” she says.

Performing the self

In its second half, Kate, For You presents an image—After Opening—that features Tomanova’s debut book, Young American, creating a moment of reverberation: a picture within a picture. This echo introduces the concept of performance—what exists within the edges of a picture is only a fragment of a larger truth. For Tomanova, the performativity of photography is most evident in the practice of self-portraiture. In her upcoming exhibition, I Love Seeing You, set to open with Her Clique at NADA Villa Warsaw 2025 and, later, with Her Clique & SoHo House in Lisbon, Tomanova revisits some of her earliest works, in which she appears in front of the camera, immersed in natural landscapes, merging with her surroundings. 

“It was performative,” she recalls. “That was the essence of it—feeling nature. I’m lying in deep moss, kind of lost in it, or hiding behind trees; or I’m lying on lava rocks that are really hard and scratchy, and they leave marks on my body. I was trying to get as close to nature as possible. And it was really about the performance of it, rather than, again, the final image,” Tomanova concludes.

Just as in these early works, Kate, For You attempts at restating the self through a performance that resists fixed definitions, such as gender, nationality, sexuality, and beyond. In the photograph Kate (ID, NYC) 2019, Tomanova captures Kate’s ID, a document that defines, labels, and categorizes identity in public contexts, and that is used to move across borders and systems. The tension between this rigidity and the fluidity explored in Kate, For You is palpable. “For a long time, I only knew Kate as Kate Vitamin. I never realized her name was such a classic Czech name—Kateřina Vítová,” she reveals. “Identity is probably the most overriding theme in my work. I think it’s about expressing the multiple identities we have. There’s the one assigned by the state or your family, which may not necessarily be who you want to be as you grow up and discover yourself. And there are so many stages that we go through in that search. We have to move through these structures that are, in many ways, very limiting.”

Kate, For You in the American landscape

When reflecting on Tomanova’s works, identity can’t be separated from movement across landscapes, borders, and cultures. Especially in her early work, shown in her upcoming exhibition, photography served as a tool to seek her identity in environments that often felt foreign or unwelcoming. “In my early self-portraiture, there was an urge or a craving to feel at home and reconnect with where I came from,” she reveals. “It was about returning to my roots, my family, and the farm where I grew up, surrounded by vineyards and fields, working in nature all the time. That’s what home means to me. When I was in the U.S. and couldn’t go home, I started taking these trips into nature to feel and see myself in the American landscape. For a long time, I felt like I didn’t belong. Photographs have this power to suddenly make something feel more real than it did before. So I kept placing myself into the American landscape, as a way of seeing that I belonged.”

Kate, For You, just like Young American in 2019, comes out during a period of political transition and uncertainty. Whether intentional or not, it does inevitably respond to the political climate, becoming a platform for viewers to process, digest, and make sense of the world around them. “Every work speaks to the political situation in America right now,” Tomanova says. “One of the driving forces for me was to find the America that I originally came for, not the America that I suddenly found myself stuck in. Young American was all about finding why I wanted to be in America and what America resonated with me. In my new work, the portraits of people in New York are about the same thing. I don’t need the architecture or the city itself. It’s the people who make the city and give it its culture. New York doesn’t allow you to sit still. You won’t survive long if you do.”

Marie Tomanova

Marie Tomanova is a Czech-born, New York City-based artist. Her new book, Kate, For You, was published in April 2025 by Untitled Publishing. Her photographs are currently on view at her first museum solo exhibition at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, along with her short movie Kate, 2025. The book coincides with the release of Marie Dvořáková’s HBO documentary The Word Between Us, following Tomanova’s personal and professional relationship with art historian and writer Thomas Beachdel in New York. Her self-portraiture work will be part of her upcoming exhibition, I Love Seeing You, set to open in Warsaw and Lisbon. She’ll also be at Calabria Fotografia Festival in San Lucido, Italy, in July 2025.

Anna Montagner