Koudelka Josef Martinez Romeo Guibert (1 results)

Soft cover. Condition: New. 1st Edition. First edition, first printing. Soft cover. Photographically illustrated matt-laminated French-fold wrappers; no dust jacket as issued. Photographs and text (in Turkish and English) by Josef Koudelka. Essay (in Turkish and English) by Romeo Martinez. Interviews with Koudelka (in Turkish and English) by Hervé Guibert, Robert Delpire and Karel Hvízdala. Designed by Tut Ajans. Includes a biography (in Turkish and English) compiled by Stuart Alexander. 140 pp., with 70 quadtone plates beautifully printed on heavy coated stock in Turkey by Mas Matbaacilik A.S., Istanbul. 11 x 9-1/2 inches. This edition was limited to 1000 copies. Out of print. Scarce. Published on the occasion of a major retrospective exhibition at the Suna and Ínan Kiraç Foundation Pera Museum, Istanbul, organized with the collaboration of Magnum Photos. New. From the publisher: "In this exhibition Josef Koudelka reveals a side of himself we rarely see because it is usually covered up by the striking aesthetic quality of his photographs. With time this apparent globetrotter has shown himself to be an engaged photographer whose now world-renowned, fundamental subject matter is, internally, always related to his native land, whether as a conscious message or out of a subconscious need. In this work the local dimension meets the universal. The retrospective takes stock of all the stages of Koudelka's work and its main thematic areas. The exhibition opens with a set of rare original prints from the late 1950s and early 1960s. They are followed by two parallel topics from the 1960s - Koudelka's key series Gypsies, and, on the other hand, his work for respected Czech theatres. In Prague, Koudelka met important figures in the arts, such as the theatre directors Otomar Krejca and Jan Grossman and the writer-dramatists Josef Topol and Václav Havel, who helped to maintain the continuity of Czech culture when it was under heavy ideological pressure from the totalitarian state. An important part of Koudelka's work is the Invasion series made in Prague, in August 1968. Shortly afterwards, in 1970, he emigrated, and the resultant feelings of being uprooted found expression in photographs which, as a series, are called Exiles. The two series, Invasion and Exiles, may be understood as a whole that is related to the Czech situation, its causes and effects. With increasing frequency and gravity his work came to include both politics (as concern for public affairs) and his own personal themes of searching and finding, all within the problematic reality of the contemporary world. Shortly after leaving his homeland he began to work with Magnum Photos, and, in 1974, became the only Czech full member of this international agency. After returning to Czechoslovakia for the first time since his departure, Koudelka photographed the devastation of the natural environment in the Ore Mountains of Bohemia, from 1990 to 1994. The photographs exhibited and published as The Black Triangle, tie in to the set made with a panoramic camera in the northern France, an area that has also been greatly affected by human intervention. These photographs became part of Koudelka's large project called Chaos, which the current retrospective concludes with. In the devastated landscape of today, the photographer has found 'tragic untamed beauty', the search for which may be understood as Koudelka's lifelong topic.".