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Josef Koudelka

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Josef Koudelka (b. 1938 in Boskovice, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech photographer.

Biography

Josef Koudelka was born in 1938 in Boskovice, Moravia, a small village of about 400 inhabitants. He began photographing his family and the surroundings with a 6 x 6 Bakelite camera. In 1961, he earned a degree from the University of Technology in Prague and later worked as an aeronautical engineer in Prague and Bratislava. At the same time, Koudelka began photographing theatre productions on an old Rolleiflex camera.

In 1967, Koudelka decided to give up his career in engineering for full-time work as a photographer. In August of 1968 he witnessed and recorded the military forces of the Warsaw Pact as they invaded Prague and crushed the Czech resistance. His pictures of the events became dramatic international symbols (though he published them for the first time anonymously in 1969), helping him to win the esteemed Robert Capa Gold Medal. This proved a major turning point in Koudelka’s life and career. In 1970 he fled Czechoslovakia and won asylum in London, England, living there for the next nine years. A nomad at heart, he continued to wander around Europe hoping to capture something of the world that seemed to be vanishing before his eyes.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Koudelka sustained his work through numerous grants and awards, and continued to exhibit and publish major projects like Gypsies (1975) and Exiles (1988). His work received much support and acknowledgment from Anna Farova, a Czech art historian, and the famous French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson. In 1987 he became a French citizen, and was able to return to Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1991. He then produced Black Triangle, documenting his country’s wasted landscape.

Koudelka resides in France and Prague and is continuing his work documenting the European landscape..

Work

His early work significantly shaped his later photography, and its emphasis on social and cultural rituals as well as death. He soon moved on to a more personal, in depth photographic study of the Gypsies of Slovakia, and later Romania. This work was exhibited in Prague in 1967. Throughout his career, Koudelka has been praised for his ability to capture the presence of the human spirit amidst dark landscapes. Desolation, waste, departure, despair and alienation are common themes in his work. His characters sometimes seem to come out of fairytales. Still, some see hope within his work — the endurance of human endeavor, in spite of its fragility. His later work focuses on the landscape removed of human subjects.

Grants and Awards

  • British Arts Council grant (1976)
  • The Prix Nadar (1978)
  • The United States National Endowment for the Arts Photography Grant (1980),
  • The Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1989)
  • The Grand Prix Cartier-Bresson (1991)

Bibliography

  • Diskutujeme o moralce dneska, 1965
  • Kral Ubu, 1965
  • Rozbor insenace Divadla Na zabradli v Praze, 1966
  • Josef Koudelka, 1968
  • Gypsies, 1975
  • Josef Koudelka, I grandi Fotografi, 1982
  • Josef Koudelka, Photo Poche, 1984
  • Josef Koudelka. Photographs by Josef Koudelka. Introduction by Bernard Cuau. Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, 1984.
  • Exiles, 1988
  • Josef Koudelka, Mission Photographique Transmanche, 1989
  • Prague, 1968. Centre National De La Photographie, Paris, 1990
  • Animaux, 1990
  • Josef Koudelka: Fotografie Divadlo za Branou 1965-1970, 1993
  • Josef Koudelka. Photographs by Josef Koudelka, Hasselblad Center, 1993
  • The Black Triangle, 1994
  • Reconnaissance: Wales, 1999
  • Chaos, 2000

External links

  • Article on the 2003 Koudelka Restrospective at the National Gallery's Trades Fair Palace in Prague
  • Introductory text from Exiles by Czeslaw Milosz
  • Brief slideshow of his works
  • Article in New York Times, 1993
  • Interview with Frank Horvat
  • Magnum page



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