Josef Koudelka

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Biography

Josef Koudelka was born in 1938 in Boskovice, Moravia, town of about 10 000 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 (CVUT), staging his first photographic exhibition the same year. Later he worked as an aeronautical engineer in Prague and Bratislava.He began taking commissions from theatre magazines, and regularly photographed stage productions at Prague’s Theatre Behind the Gate on an old Rolleiflex camera. In 1967, Koudelka decided to give up his career in engineering for full-time work as a photographer.He had returned from a project shooting gypsies in Romania just two days before the Soviet invasion, in August 1968. He witnessed and recorded the military forces of the Warsaw Pact as they invaded Prague and crushed the Czech reforms. Koudelka’s negatives were smuggled out of Prague into the hands of the Magnum agency, and published anonymously in The Sunday Times Magazine under the initials P. P. (Prague Photographer) for fear of reprisal to him and his family.His pictures of the events became dramatic international symbols. In 1969 the “anonymous Czech photographer” was awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal for photographs requiring exceptional courage.With Magnum to recommend him to the British authorities, he applied for a three-month working visa and fled to England in 1970, where he applied for political asylum, in 1971 joined Magnum Photos and stayed for more than a decade. A nomad at heart, he continued to wander around Europe with his camera and little else.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, his first book) and Exiles (1988, his second). Since 1986, he has worked with a panoramic camera and issued a compilation of these photographs in his book Chaos in 1999. Koudelka has had more than a dozen books of his work published, including most recently in 2006 the retrospective volume Koudelka.He has won significant awards such as the Prix Nadar (1978), a Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1989), a Grand Prix Cartier-Bresson (1991), and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (1992). Significant exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography, New York; the Hayward Gallery, London; the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam; and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris.He and his work received much support and acknowledgment from the famous French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, his friend. As well as, among many others, also Anna Farova, a Czech art historian.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. He has two daughters and a young son, each from a different country: France, England and Italy.

Education

1956/61 Degree in Engineering, The Technical University of Prague, Czechoslovakia

Awards

2004 Cornell Capa Infinity Award, International Center of Photography, USA 1992 Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation Photography Prize, Sweden 1991 Grand Prix Henri Cartier-Bresson, France 1987 Grand Prix National de la Photographie, French Ministry of Culture, France 1980 National Endowment for the Arts Council, USA 1978 Prix Nadar, France 1976 British Arts Council Grant to cover life in the British Isles, UK 1973 British Arts Council Grant to cover Gypsy life in Britain, UK 1972 British Arts Council Grant to cover Kendal and Southend, UK 1969 Robert Capa Gold Medal Award, National Press Photographers Association, USA 1967 Award by Union of Czechoslovakian Artists, Czechoslovakia

Exhibitions

* 2008 - Koudelka, Benaki Museum, Athens, GR * 2008 - Invaze (Invasion) Old Town Hall, Prague, CZ * 2003 – Teatro del Tempo, Mercati di Traiano, Roma, Italy * 2002/03 – Rétrospective - Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles, France; Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexico; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Monterrey, Mexico * 2002 Josef Koudelka : Fotograf, National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic * 1999/01 – Chaos, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Roma, Italy; Cantieri Culturali della Zisa, Palermo, Italy; Palazzo Marino alla Scala, Milano Italy; The Snellman Hall, Helsinki, Finland; sala de exposiciones de Plaza de Espana, Madrid, Spain * 1998 – Reconnaissance: Wales, National Museums and Galleries of Wales, Cardiff, UK * 1995/97 – Periplanissis : following Ulysses' Gaze, Mylos, Thessaloniki, Greece; Zapeion, Athens, Greece; Centre culturel Una Volta, Bastia, France; ville de Rodez, France; Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan; Museo di Storia della Fotografia, Fratelli Alinari, Firenze, Italy * 1994 – Cerny trojuhelnik - Podkrusnohori : Fotografie 1990–1994 (Black Triangle), Salmovsky Palac, Prague, Czech Republic * 1990 – Josef Koudelka z Fotografického dila 1958-1990, Umeleckoprumyslové museum, Prague, Czechoslovakia * 1989 – Josef Koudelka, Mission Transmanche, galerie de l'ancienne poste, Calais, France * 1988/89 – Josef Koudelka, Centre National de la Photographie, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France; International Center of Photography, New York, USA; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany; IVAM, Valencia, Spain * 1984 – Josef Koudelka, Hayward Gallery, London, UK * 1977 – Gitans: la fin du voyage, Galerie Delpire, Paris;Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; The Tel-Aviv Museum, Israel; Victoria & Albert Museum * 1975 – Josef Koudelka, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA * 1968 – Josef Koudela: Divadelni fotografie – 1965-1968, Divadlo za branou, Prague, Czechoslovakia * 1967 – Josef Koudela: Cikáni – 1961-1966, Divadlo za branou, Prague, Czechoslovakia * 1961 – Divadlo Semafor, Prague, Czechoslovakia

Books

* 2006 – Koudelka, Delpire, France; Contrasto, Italy; Aperture, USA; Thames & Hudson, UK; Braus, Germany; Lunwerg, Spain; Fototorst, Czech Republic * 2006 – Koudelka: Camargue, Actes Sud, France * 2004 – L'épreuve totalitaire (essay by Jean-Pierre Montier), Delpire, France * 2003 – Théâtre du Temps, Actes Sud, France; (Teatro del Tempo), Peliti Associati, Italy; Apeiron, Greece * 2002 – Josef Koudelka - monograph, 80-7215-166-5, Torst,Czech Republic, edition Fototorst * 2001 – Lime Stone, La Martinière, France * 1999 – Chaos, Nathan/Delpire, France; Phaidon Press, UK; Federico Motta Editore, Italy * 1998 – Reconnaissance Wales, Ffotogallery/ National Museums and Galleries of Wales, Cardiff, UK * 1994 – Cerný Trojuhelník - Podkrušnohorí : Fotografie 1990-1994 (The Black Triangle: The Foothills of the Ore Mountain) Vesmir, Czech Republic * 1993 – Josef Koudelka, Hasselblad Center, Sweden * 1993 – Josef Koudelka: Fotografie Divadlo za branou 1965-1970, Divadlo za Branou II, Czech Republic * 1990 – Prague 1968, Centre National de la Photographie, France * 1990 – Animal, Trois Cailloux/maison de la Culture d'Amiens, France * 1989 – Mission Photographique Transmanche, Editions de la Différence, France * 1988/97 – Exiles, Centre National de la Photographie, France; Delpire éditeur, France (Exiles), Aperture, USA; Thames & Hudson, UK * 1984 – Photo Poche, Centre National de la Photographie, France * 1982 – Josef Koudelka: I Grandi Fotografi, Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, Italy * 1975 – Gitans : la fin du voyage, Delpire, France; (Gypsies), Aperture, USA * 1966 – Kral Ubu: Rozbor inscenace Divadla Na Zabradli v Praze (with Alfred Jarry), Divadelni Ustav, Czechoslovakia * 1965 – Diskutujeme o moralce dneska, Nakladatelstvi Politické Literatury, Czechoslovakia

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.