Josef Koudelka, Prague 1968. c Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos
Josef Koudelka brought us into the Soviet invasion on the streets of Prague, Czechoslavakia in 1968 by smuggling out his film and getting it to the Magnum office in Paris. An engineer by profession, like Sebastaio Salgado, Koudelka was seduced by the camera and the events unfolding before him. Having returned to Prague only one day before the invasion, he sensed the weight of history, loaded up his camera and took to the streets. But it was not until the one-year anniversary that the images he made were published, and then only credited P.P. for "Prague photographer" to protect Koudelka's identity.
In a gripping show of his black and white images now on display at the Getty until March 22, we are thrown back into those days of tumult and caught up in the passion, chaos and repression that he recorded. In the days before Facebook and Instagram revolutions, we have to be thankful for the tenacity and commitment of someone like Koudelka who not only chose to be there, but used his eye and artistry to make these powerful images so the world could see the strong arm of the Soviet Union as it brought its full force against the Czechoslovakian people.
Koudelka eventually felt forced to leave his homeland and began years of photographic wandering, exploring the issues of alienation and statelessness, adding to his earlier Eastern Europe work in the '70s documenting the Gypy community by continuing it in England, where he repatriated. The title of the current Getty show, Nationality Doubtful, comes from the determination made by British border control whenever Koudelka applied to re-enter his adopted homeland as he returned from his photographic excursions. Over those early years he connected with Magnum photo agency and the Magnum photographers including Elliot Erwitt and Henri Cartier-Bresson, who always gave him assistance, advice and a floor on which to spread his sleeping bag.
The Getty show is sweeping in scope, spanning the various segments of Koudelka's long career: his early experimental work on the avant-garde theater in Czechoslovakia, his work documenting Gypsies, the Czech invasion, exiles and more recent panoramas--devoid of people but not the effect that people have wrought on their environment. His most recent work, images of the walls that divide us are stark and dramatic, gritty and powerful.
Al 'Eizariya (Bethany) 2010. Josef Koudelka, Magnum Photos
Josef Koudelka, Prague 1968 .c Josef Koudelka, Magnum Photos.
Josef Koudelka, Czechoslovakia, Straznice, 1966. Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos