Josef Koudelka
Josef Koudelka is one of the great photographers of the last 50 years. He was trained as an engineer and worked in Prague in the late 1950s and into the 60s but photography increasingly became his passion. He famously worked photographing the Romany people of central Europe in 1968. He arrived back in Prague just a few days before Soviet Forces invaded Prague to squash the loosening of political repression and celebration of free expression known as the Prague Spring. He photographed the invasion, the street protests and the fighting and secretly smuggled the film out to the Magnum Photo Agency, and the images were published worldwide. The credit line read P.P. for Prague Photographer. In 1969 the anonymous P.P. was awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Award.
In 1975 his book on the Romany called Gypsies was published, followed in 1988 by his magnificent book Exiles, which contains some of the most powerfully disorienting images I have seen. Most of the pictures are clearly made by someone on the outside of each society he photographed. The images identify his efforts to understand where he was and his struggle to find his place, since Prague could no longer be his home. His work has not fallen into the trap of repetition. Koudelka's panoramic landscapes as seen in his 1999 book Chaos, document land that has been attacked by humans, for profit and out of dystopian malice.
I first met him at the home of Henri Cartier-Bresson and his wife Martine Franck, on Rue de Rivoli, in Paris. I was in Paris for a solo exhibition of my work at Centre Georges Pompidou in February of 1979. I had been invited by Cartier-Bresson to visit, so I arrived with my friend, the late California photographer Doug Muir. Koudelka was there, as was the Curator Bill Ewing, who was then curating at the International Center of Photography in New York. And, of course Martine, who was a great photographer in her own right. Josef and I seemed to resonate with one another immediately. Three years later I was again in Paris and Koudelka and I went out for drinks and we stopped at a gallery opening of a show by Rene Burri, who was a colleague of his at Magnum.
This picture was made as Koudelka greeted Burri with congratulations and more than a little enthusiasm. I happened to be very close at hand.
I saw him again in 2018 in Paris. He was 80 years old, and looked like a slightly diminished version of his regular disheveled self. But the sparkle and effusive smile were on display, as ever.