{"id":15524,"date":"2011-08-23T15:21:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T14:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amateurphotographer.co.uk\/uncategorized\/josef-koudelka-1938-present-iconic-photographer-15524"},"modified":"2014-10-23T11:32:15","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T10:32:15","slug":"josef-koudelka-1938-present-iconic-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/iconic-images\/josef-koudelka-1938-present-iconic-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"Josef Koudelka 1938-present – Iconic Photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image: Warsaw Pact tanks invade Prague, Czechoslovakia, August, 1968 \u00a9 Joseuf Koudelka\/Magnum Photos<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Josef Koudelka has long been widely regarded as one of the greatest living photojournalists, yet he remains an outsider who lives out the ideal of the romantic artist. For most of his adult life he has lived a rootless, semi-nomadic existence, travelling widely and photographing compulsively. He pursues his own personal projects, refuses to shoot editorial or commercial work, and rarely does interviews.<\/p>\n

Although he is best known for his extraordinary images of the Warsaw Pact\u2019s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, this was a rare foray into \u2018news\u2019 photography. Most of his work focuses on documenting everyday lives of ordinary people, usually outsiders, travellers or exiles, or landscapes transformed by human activity.<\/p>\n

He first became fascinated by photography in his mid-teens, but initially had no plans to become a photographer. He was mainly interested in aircraft design and, after graduating with an engineering degree from Prague University in Czechoslovakia, he worked as an aeronautical engineer for several years. From the time he was at university, however, photography gradually grew to became the major passion in his life.<\/p>\n

His first paid photographic assignments were shot for the Czech theatre magazine Divadlo in 1961 and he continued his association with the theatre for several years. When the famous avant-garde Theatre Behind the Gate was founded in Prague in 1965, Koudelka became the in-house photographer. <\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t interested in conventional theatre photographs, and experimented with abstract and often distorted images. The results were often intense and compelling. When Koudelka finally gave up his engineering career in 1967, theatre photography provided him with an income.<\/p>\n

From 1962 onwards Koudelka was also working on his first major project, photographing gypsy communities. Their behaviour, lifestyle and appearance fascinated him, and later he went on to photograph gypsies in Romania, Hungary, Spain and France. He had plans to publish a book of these photographs, but in 1968 his life was unexpectedly changed.<\/p>\n

On 21 August, the Russian authorities, angered by the liberal political reforms introduced by Czech leader Alexander Dubcek, sent hundreds of thousands of Warsaw Pact troops to occupy the country to re-establish Communist control and reverse the reforms. As the occupying army\u2019s tanks began to enter Prague, Koudelka instinctively knew it was important to capture what was happening.<\/p>\n

\u2018I had never photographed anything that you would call \u201cnews\u201d,\u2019 he later commented in the book Magnum Stories. \u2018Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I was confronted with that kind of situation. I responded to it. I knew it was important to photograph, so I photographed. I didn\u2019t think much about what I was doing. Later, some people told me that I could have been killed, but I hadn\u2019t considered that at the time.\u2019<\/p>\n

Koudelka photographed the invasion and the violent street protests that immediately followed, and during the following seven days shot more than 5,000 photographs. He was in the thick of the action, and on one occasion he was fired at and chased by invading troops and only escaped by disappearing into the crowds of protestors. <\/p>\n

These violent and dramatic scenes made extremely newsworthy subjects, but getting them published could have resulted in Koudelka\u2019s arrest and his family\u2019s persecution. When a selection of his \u2018invasion\u2019 images were published in The Sunday Times a year later, Koudelka was not named as the photographer; the byline was P.P. (Prague Photographer). <\/p>\n

\u2018From that moment,\u2019 Koudelka told The Guardian in 2008, \u2018I was afraid to go back to Czechoslovakia because I knew that if they wanted to find out who the unknown photographer was, they could do it.\u2019<\/p>\n

After working in England on a three-month visa, Koudelka applied for political asylum in the UK and joined Magnum Photos the following year. Leaving his homeland was the beginning of Koudelka\u2019s rootless, semi-nomadic existence. In his early years in the UK he would often sleep under a desk in the Magnum office, or on a friend\u2019s floor, or even under the stars; he lived on small grants and awards given by arts organisations. <\/p>\n

After completing his work on Romany communities, his book Gypsies was finally published in 1975. It was followed by Exiles in 1988, a melancholy exploration of loneliness and alienation. After Koudelka\u2019s return to Czechoslovakia in 1989, he began exploring the country\u2019s landscape. <\/p>\n

He focused on the Podkrusnohor\u00ed Region, an area devastated by industrial development, and the resulting panoramic photographs were published in his book The Black Triangle (1994). In recent years he has mainly photographed with his Linhof panoramic camera (which he used for his 2009 book Piedmont), although he still shoots with the Leicas used in his earlier work.<\/p>\n

Koudelka is now 73 and has small apartments in Paris and Prague, but continues to travel often; during the past five years, he has photographed in countries including Israel, Jordan, Libya, Syria, Poland, France, England and the USA. Journalists who have met him say he is still youthful and energetic. He has three children by different women in different countries, but admits that he rarely sees them.<\/p>\n

\u2018I still don\u2019t have a car, a television, a mobile phone, a wife,\u2019 he told The Sunday Times in 2008. \u2018What I don\u2019t have I don\u2019t need. For me, the most important thing is to wake up in the morning, feel well, and go and take photographs.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Biography<\/h2>\n