Koudelka

Book - 2006

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2nd Floor 779.092/Koudelka Due Jan 24, 2025
Subjects
Published
New York : Aperture [2006]
Language
English
Other Authors
Robert Delpire (-)
Edition
First Aperture edition
Physical Description
275 pages : chiefly illustrations ; 30 x 31 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (270-273).
ISBN
9781597110303
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Revealing the breadth of Josef Koudelka's artistic achievement, this lavish collection gathers over 150 of the photographer's major works in one volume for the first time. Born in 1938 in Moravia (now in the Czech Republic), Koudelka grew up behind the Iron Curtain and trained to be an aeronautical engineer. His early images, including production stills for a Czech repertory theater company and tense shots of the Soviet invasion of Prague demonstrate the rigorous compositional eye, taste for the theatrical and otherworldly strangeness that define his work. The pictures are always accessible, but Koudelka's arrangements and printing style push much of his work toward somber dreaminess. (Some of the brief monographs interspersed with the pictures are informative; others are filled with pretentious jargon.) After his exile from Czechoslovakia in 1970, he quickly found a home at the renowned Magnum agency with the support of Cartier-Bresson. In Koudelka's subsequent work-a series on Gypsies; stunning, nearly abstract landscapes; the shipping of a colossal Lenin statue through the Balkans-he remains a poet with a lens, capturing a deeply personal vision while documenting the real world. This collection confirms Koudelka's status as one of the most versatile and singular age-makers in contemporary photography. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Koudelka is known for his bleak yet beautiful black-and-white photographs of Prague and eastern Europe. Part documentary and part fine art, his dark works range over the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and Gypsies in Romania. Through it all, Koudelka captures the beauty and dignity in the people and the landscape. This handsome career overview (since the mid-1970s) is organized into seven thematic chapters that focus on the artist's earlier photo series: "In the Beginning," "Experiments," "Theater," "Gypsies," "Invasion," "Exiles," and "Chaos." Beautifully designed and illustrated, it features essays by writers such as Michel Frizot and Robert Delpire, who introduce each chapter. Koudelka, whose earlier publications include Josef Koudelka, Chaos, and The Exiles, is a member of Magnum Photo and currently resides in France. Highly recommended for all collections.-Shauna Frischkorn, Millersville Univ., PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.