Josef Koudelka

Between 1991 and 2015, Josef Koudelka completed an epic journey across twenty countries bordering the Mediterranean, stopping at over 200 Greek and Roman archaeological sites, relentlessly researching the beauty of the ancient world. Before the Magnum photographer, nobody had attempted to make such a comprehensive photographic record of these artefacts with so much persistence and so little assistance. In this book, produced in close collaboration with the photographer, Koudelka’s aim was to use art to re-appropriate a world that is escaping us and that we could lose – a world where the mind alternates between reason and faith, law and liberty.

Fifty years after first publication, one of the most important photobooks of the 20th century returns, offering an intimate glimpse into the daily lives of the Roma community in the 1960s and 1970s. Josef Koudelka’s Gypsies remains one of his best-known series, offering a unique survey of the lives of the Roma community across then-Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, France and Spain between 1962 and 1971. Originally published in 1975, five years after Koudelka left Prague following the Soviet Union’s invasion, Gypsies is a classic of documentary photography. Now returning in its original, hardback format, this timely new edition is as much a pioneering photoessay as it is a lesson in book making. Carrying only his equipment, a rucksack and sleeping bag, Koudelka journeyed between different village and encampments. His nomadic existence, defined by a sense of displacement, allowed him to gain the trust of the Roma communities he encountered. The resulting series eschews the often-derogatory depictions of the community to instead provide unparalleled insight into their world, shining a light on their traditions, struggles and routines. The Roma in these images were photographed mostly in a state that no longer exists, ruled by a regime that dissolved in 1989. With such few historical depictions, Gypsies is not only a testament to the beauty of photography, but a vital historical document of a community often relegated to the shadows. Arriving at a moment of contemporary unrest and social marginalization, Gypsies is a poignant reminder of the often bleak reality of the disenfranchised, and the power of photography to bear witness.

About Exiles, Cornell Capa once wrote, Koudelka's unsentimental, stark, brooding, intensely human imagery reflect his own spirit, the very essence of an exile who is at home wherever his wandering body finds haven in the night. In this newly revised and expanded edition of the 1988 classic, which includes ten new images, Koudelka's work once more forms a powerful document of the spiritual and physical state of exile. The sense of private mystery that fills these photographs mostly taken during Koudelkas many years of wandering through Europe since leaving his native Czechoslovakia in 1968 speaks of passion and reserve, of his rage to see. Solitary, moving, deeply felt, and strangely disturbing, the images in Exiles suggest alienation, disconnection, and love. Exiles, edited and sequenced by Koudelka and Robert Delpire, evokes some of the most com - pelling and troubling themes of the twentieth century, while resonating with equal force in this current moment of profound migrations and transience. This edition also includes new text by Robert Delpire and Josef Kudelka.

"Koudelka's unsentimental, stark, brooding, intensely human imagery reflects his own spirit, the very essence of an exile who is at home wherever his wandering body finds haven in the night."-Cornell Capa In 1988, Josef Koudelka published what was to become one of his most famous and canonical series: Exiles. These gorgeously austere black-and-white images described the travels and everyday life of the peoples he encountered while roaming Europe. Josef Koudelka: The Making of Exiles is an exploration of the genesis and the making of this photographic journey. Enhanced by numerous photographs that have never been published--in particular the photographer's self-portraits--and captions by Koudelka, it includes numerous archival documents (such as reproductions of his travel journals), thumbnail reproductions of the book's layout, an introduction by curator Clement Cheroux and an essay by photo-historian Michel Frizot, who spent hours interviewing Koudelka. Josef Koudelka was born in Moravia in 1938. Initially an aeronautic engineer, he launched full time into photography in the late sixties. In 1968, he photographed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, publishing the results under the pseudonym P.P. (Prague Photographer). Koudelka left Czechoslovakia in 1970 and was briefly stateless before obtaining political asylum in England. Shortly afterwards, he joined Magnum Photos. In 1975 he published Gypsies. Koudelka has exhibited at the MoMA and at the International Centre of Photography in New York, at the Hayward Gallery in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.