After receiving a painting MFA, Czech-born Marie Tomanova left to the United States. She began to focus on photography, and an expanded practice that also includes installation, video and film, drawing, and painting. Working primarily with the portrait and the self-portrait, her work is about connection, identity, displacement, gender, memory, home, intimacy, time, and belonging.
Tomanova's first book Young American (Paradigm, 2019), with foreword by Ryan McGinley, focuses on individuality, identity, and belonging in the American social landscape. Tomanova's second book, with art historian Thomas Beachdel, New York New York (Hatje Cantz, 2021), with foreword by Kim Gordon, entwines portraiture and landscape to expand the meaning of each. Her third book It Was Once My Universe (Super Labo, 2022), with foreword by Lucy Sante, is a deeply personal project about her return home to Czech Republic after 8 years in exile as an immigrant living in the U.S. Her latest book, Kate, For You (Untitled, 2025), is a longitudinal portrait project on a single individual, with foreword by Libuše Jarcovjáková.
Solo exhibitions worldwide include: New York City, Vienna, Berlin, Lisbon, Prague, Tokyo, Paris, Warsaw, Tbilisi, Antwerp, Brno, Munich. Her work has been exhibited for the European Month of Photography 2020 Biennial in Berlin and in 2025 in Bratislava, at Paris Photo, and at the Rencontres d’Arles as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award 2021 where it was selected to travel to the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival in Xiamen, China. Her project First Roll, Kate and Odie (2025) was selected to represent FOTO WIEN 2025, of which it was part. Her trajectory as an artist is the subject of a recently released award-winning feature length HBO documentary film directed by Marie Dvořáková, World Between Us.
Tomanova's first book Young American (Paradigm, 2019), with foreword by Ryan McGinley, focuses on individuality, identity, and belonging in the American social landscape. Tomanova's second book, with art historian Thomas Beachdel, New York New York (Hatje Cantz, 2021), with foreword by Kim Gordon, entwines portraiture and landscape to expand the meaning of each. Her third book It Was Once My Universe (Super Labo, 2022), with foreword by Lucy Sante, is a deeply personal project about her return home to Czech Republic after 8 years in exile as an immigrant living in the U.S. Her latest book, Kate, For You (Untitled, 2025), is a longitudinal portrait project on a single individual, with foreword by Libuše Jarcovjáková.
Solo exhibitions worldwide include: New York City, Vienna, Berlin, Lisbon, Prague, Tokyo, Paris, Warsaw, Tbilisi, Antwerp, Brno, Munich. Her work has been exhibited for the European Month of Photography 2020 Biennial in Berlin and in 2025 in Bratislava, at Paris Photo, and at the Rencontres d’Arles as part of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award 2021 where it was selected to travel to the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival in Xiamen, China. Her project First Roll, Kate and Odie (2025) was selected to represent FOTO WIEN 2025, of which it was part. Her trajectory as an artist is the subject of a recently released award-winning feature length HBO documentary film directed by Marie Dvořáková, World Between Us.
