Marie Tomanova book signing for Kate, for you

This book is focused on a single person, Kate. Marie Tomanova first met Kate in June 2017, to take photographs in her apartment in Brooklyn, where she lived with her new kitten Cashew and her partner Odie. Until then, Tomanova knew of her only through social media and that she was Czech, like Marie, living in New York City. She deeply identified with Kate that first afternoon they spent together and shot one roll of film of 36 exposures in the bathroom, which resulted in the widely circulated image, Kate and Odie (2017), that became the cover of Tomanova's first book, Young American (2019), with an introduction by photographer Ryan McGinley.

Kate, for you is a companion to Tomanova’s first major museum show of the same name, curated by art historian Thomas Beachdel, at the Moravian Gallery in Brno, Czech Republic on view until September 28, 2025. At the heart of Kate, for you is this complete roll of film, in its original sequence, never seen before, and presented as one work, First Roll, Kate and Odie (2025). It stands as a powerful testament to Tomanova's openness and transparency as a photographer. First Roll is a sequence of moments that closely connect with one another; it is cinematic, but it is also still. There is an intimacy and closeness. The mediation between photographic and cinematic (filmic)—between single image and sequence—allows for a complex picture of the experience of that afternoon in 2017 to become more than just visible, but tangible.

Foreword by Libuše Jarcovjáková. Introduction by Thomas Beachdel