Josef Koudelka: Exiles

Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 180
Number of images: 77
Publication date: 2014-10-31
Measurements: 11.9 x 10.8 x 0.9 inches
ISBN: 9781597112697

Josef Koudelka (born in Moravia, Czech Republic, 1938) is a member of Magnum Photos and has received the Prix Nadar, Grand Prix National de la Photographie, HCB Award, and Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and International Center of Photography, New York; Hayward Gallery, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.

In 1968, Josef Koudelka photographed the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, publishing these images under the initials P. P. (Prague Photographer). Koudelka left Czechoslovakia in 1970, became stateless, was then granted political asylum in England, and shortly thereafter joined Magnum Photos. Koudelka has published eleven books of photographs focusing on the relationship between contemporary man and the landscape, including Gypsies (1975), Exiles (1988), Black Triangle (1994), Invasion 68: Prague (2008), and Wall (2013). Significant exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography, New York; Hayward Gallery, London; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Koudelka is the recipient of the Medal of Merit awarded by the Czech Republic (2002) and numerous other awards. In 2012, he was named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. He is based in Paris and Prague.

Czesław Miłosz, poet, essayist, translator, and novelist, was born in 1911 in Lithuania. He moved to Warsaw in the late 1930s and during World War II worked as a writer and an editor for Resistance publications. After the war Miłosz joined the Polish diplomatic service, before breaking with the government in 1951. In 1961 he became professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of California, Berkeley. He received numerous honors, including the Nobel Prize in 1981. His books include The Captive Mind, The Issa Valley, The Land of Ulro, The Seizure of Power, Native Realm, and The Separate Notebooks. He died in 2004.

Stuart Alexander is international specialist in photographs at Christie’s, New York. As an independent curator and scholar he has published widely and organized numerous exhibitions with major international publishers, collections, and museums. He is recognized as an authority on the work of Brassaï, Robert Frank, and Josef Koudelka, and has contributed an essay to the catalog for Koudelka’s retrospective exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Exiles is the deeply personal culmination of over two decades spent meandering in Europe.”—Photoblogapher

“His most distinctive work, and perhaps his most important.”—L’Oeil de la Photographie