“Nudity Is Just Normal”: Stripping Down With Photographer Marie Tomanova

THURSDAY 7:10 PM JUNE 12, 2025 EAST VILLAGE

Before she was a venerated photographer, Marie Tomanova was an au pair in North Carolina with a brilliant idea: she would move to New York City and attend the opening of a Ryan McGinley exhibition completely naked. Whether her objective was seduction or Interior Scroll-type performance was besides the point. “The logic is crazy if you think about it,” she told me while puffing a borrowed Parliament outside of Dashwood Books last weekend for the launch of Kate, For You, a collection of Tomanova’s photographs of her titular muse (although she prefers the word “inspiration.”) It’s an unorthodox spin on a photo book; she’s rejected the artist’s instinct to edit and curate and instead printed an entire roll of film taken in 2017 of Kate, a 21-year old Czech girl, thrashing around in a bathtub with her then-partner, Odie. To celebrate its release, we pulled the artist away from the swarm of admirers to talk about why she hates the word “muse” and how she goes about asking her subjects to disrobe.

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ELOISE KING-CLEMENTS: How are you feeling? Are you happy to be smoking right now?

MARIE TOMANOVA: I am happy to get a break. It’s nice to get this little sneak away from a book launch and have a cigarette and then run back.

KING-CLEMENTS: I find photographers sometimes obfuscate around questions. Do you feel that way? 

TOMANOVA: I love it, I have to say. I love that I have a voice. That’s why I do art. It’s all the artist coming out with the inner self.

KING-CLEMENTS: Who’s the guest of honor tonight?

TOMANOVA: So many people, all my dear friends, but it’s definitely Kate. The book is about Kate and she’s here signing the books with me.

KING-CLEMENTS: You met in 2017, and you had this infamous shoot in a bathroom.

TOMANOVA: Yes, we did. I didn’t expect it to be in the bathroom, but it was in Kate’s apartment and they had a really cute pink bathroom and I was like, “I’m going to take pictures of Kate and their new kitten, Cashew.” But the cat didn’t want to go in the bathtub, obviously. So it was Kate and her partner back then, Odie. It was at the beginning of their relationship and they let me into their world. I just remember standing on top of the bathtub, trying not to fall in and looking through the viewfinder of the little camera and feeling these strong emotions. It’s so special in photography when that happens. They were just so open and real and themselves and in love. And it all shows in the pictures. Photography is so much about selecting the one photo, but I keep coming back to this roll because they’re so precious and real. That’s why I decided to show the whole roll, which is very non-standard for photographers. It’s in the book chronologically, as it was shot, so you can see the progress of our time together. 

KING-CLEMENTS: You say you’re kind of a nudist, and your photos have all this wonderful nudity. So, during a shoot, how do you ask people to take their clothes off?

TOMANOVA: I always ask if they’re okay shooting topless. It’s mainly topless. I do full nudes with myself. But Kate is Czech. She’s the same spirit as me. When I was a kid, with my sisters and my parents, we would work in the fields, and then afterwards we would go on bikes to a pond and all jump in the pond nude. And after a day of work, it’s the best thing ever. I grew up in a family where nudity is just normal and nothing weird. It’s kind of a Czech thing, more than in the US, for sure.

KING-CLEMENTS: Definitely.

TOMANOVA: For me, it’s important that the people feel good and I feel good. So there’s a warm-up period for sure, where I talk to people and connect with them and then it just kind of happens. It’s not sexual at all. It’s just about not hiding under any layers. There’s nothing to hide behind, just you. I love that.

KING-CLEMENTS: It’s interesting you say that. I agree with you, but you could argue that one can hide behind nudity.

TOMANOVA: I never get that, actually. It needs to feel right. If it doesn’t feel right, I don’t push people to shoot nude. I want the people to be themselves and capture that.

KING-CLEMENTS: So you hate the word muse.

TOMANOVA: I do. It has such bad connotations for me with the past and these masters painting women, and it’s all very wrong in my opinion. But what other word is there?

KING-CLEMENTS: Let’s come up with one right now.

TOMANOVA: I keep thinking about that because people keep saying muse and I’m like, “I don’t want to use that word.” I say “inspiration.” But other than that, I haven’t come up with a word yet.

KING-CLEMENTS: I also heard a story about when you lived in North Carolina and wanted to meet Ryan McGinley…

TOMANOVA: [Laughs] I was sitting in North Carolina, I’d come to the US from the Czech Republic as an au pair because I didn’t know anybody here, so I was sitting by a computer looking at some images and this photo from Ryan popped up, and it’s this nude girl holding a wolf. It’s a black and white photo. I loved it. And I was like, “All right, I need to meet this guy. How am I going to do it?” My idea was that I will move to New York next year and I will come to his opening, get nude, and hopefully he’ll photograph me. Thank god I never did that.

KING-CLEMENTS: Wait, walk us through a little bit of the logic.

TOMANOVA: The logic is crazy if you think about it. It’s me coming from the Czech Republic, where women were not very respected as artists, and my only understanding of becoming someone was marrying some important man. I never thought I could make it myself. Then I came to the US and started photography and I realized that actually, I have this power, I can do it myself. I realized that I was limiting myself in my own head and I can be successful myself. And I did go to Ryan’s exhibition, years later.

KING-CLEMENTS: Once you had finally moved to New York?

TOMANOVA: Yes. I moved to upstate New York as an au pair, then to the city. I waited four or five years before I went to see Ryan because he was such a big idol. And it’s so hard to meet your icons because you’re so terrified that they will, I don’t know, reject you or whatever. So there was so much anxiety about it. In 2018, I had my first show called Young American, and he had an opening the day before me. And I was like, “Thank god,” because if it were at the same time, nobody would come to my show because everybody would go to Ryan’s, obviously. I went to see him at his opening and I got all the courage I could and I walked up to him and talked to him.

KING-CLEMENTS: What’d you say?

TOMANOVA: Actually, I don’t even know. But it’s recorded because it’s made its way into the HBO documentary that just launched about me. They’ve been following me since 2018, a few weeks before my first solo show. And the documentarian went with me when I went to talk to Ryan and she was filming at the exhibition as I talked to him.

KING-CLEMENTS: So we’re going to see it on the silver screen?

TOMANOVA: Yes, yes. I’m so shy and red in my face talking to him and I’m just like, “Oh my god.” I invited him to see my show and he actually came to see my show. He loved my work. He was so sweet and so supportive. It was life-changing, when your idol comes to your show and sits with you for two hours. He was like, “Dude, this is great. You should be shooting this and this, these campaigns, whatever.” I’m like, “Really? You think so?”

KING-CLEMENTS: Did he shoot you in the nude?

TOMANOVA: A few months after that he asked me if I would pose, and I did. I was totally nude. And I was like, “Oh my god, this is it.” 

KING-CLEMENTS: Hell yeah. 

TOMANOVA: Coming full circle.