Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1938 Boskovice, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)

Year of Migration to the UK: 1970

Biography

Photographer Josef Koudelka was born in Boskovice, Moravia, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) on 10 January 1938. He discovered photography at a young age and, while working as an engineer, found freelance work as a photographer for the Divadlo za branou theatre in Prague in his spare time. It soon became clear that photography was more than just a passion for Koudelka, and in the late 1960s he left his engineering job to focus on it full-time. A central concern of his work at this time was the Romany Gypsy communities in Slovakia. Furthermore, he was living in Prague when the Soviets invaded in 1968 and was one of the few people to capture the events of that momentous day. Koudelka’s photographs of the Prague invasion caught the attention of Magnum Photos, the renowned international photographic agency, which, a year later, published the ‘newly smuggled out’ images in the UK in The Sunday Times under the alias ‘Prague photographer’ (‘Anniversary’, The Sunday Times, 1969). Soon, these images became the accepted version of events in the eyes of people the world over, and Koudelka, or rather his anonymous alias, was awarded the Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal (O’Hagan, 2018). Since Magnum had recommended him to the British authorities, Koudelka applied for a three-month working visa and fled to England in 1970, where he was granted political asylum.

In England Koudelka met Magnum photographer David Hurn, appearing on his doorstep ‘with 800 rolls of unprocessed film’, wanting ‘only a darkroom where he would process his film and a floor on which he would lay his sleeping bag’ (Young, 1984). Becoming good friends, the initial stay of six months turned into ten years. Koudelka joined Magnum as an Associate Member and became a Full Member in 1974, and England became a base for numerous travels, sustaining his work through various grants and awards. Koudelka exhibited his works widely in London and later in Wales, documenting nomadic communities in the UK and Ireland. In 1973 he was included in the group show, Two Views: Photographs of British Towns as Seen by Eight Photographers, at The Photographers Gallery, London, alongside fellow Magnum photographer Ian Berry, Manx photographer Chris Killip, and Ron McCormick, among others. It signalled the beginning of his participation in several group shows at the Gallery over the following two decades. He participated in the Gallery’s Concerning Photography: Some Thoughts About Reading Photographs in 1977, and the same year held a solo show at the V&A called Gitans: la Fin du Voyage.

He presented a solo show entitled Josef Koudelka at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1984. Offering a different body of work to the gypsies and nomadic communities for which he he was well-known, Koudelka showed images of the landscapes and still life encountered on his journeys. Around this time, he came to ‘look on France as his home’, a country which he believed ‘embraces exiles more willingly than any other’ (Young, 1984). His time in England had been formally stateless, for whenever he returned from abroad his papers were marked ‘N.D.’ for ‘Nationality Doubtful’. He became a naturalised citizen of France in 1987. Despite his emigration, Koudelka continued to exhibit in the UK, notably showing his exhibition Transmissions from Behind the Iron Curtain in the Lyttelton Circle Foyer of the Royal National Theatre, London in 1998. The show included Koudelka’s photographs of theatrical productions in Prague before 1968 as well as the Soviet invasion, both series having ‘never been exhibited in the West before’ (Halliburton, 1998). The same year, his Cardiff Bay photographs were shown at National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, as part of a five-venue celebration of his work in South Wales, including Exiles at Ffotogallery. In 2014 the Getty Museum in California accorded Koudelka his first American retrospecitve. Three years later his work was shown in a solo presentation entitled Josef Koudelka: The Making of Landscape at The Signet Library, Edinburgh and, in 2019, his work featured in Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art held at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol.

Josef Koudelka lives and works between France and the Czech Republic. His works are held in UK public collections including the Arts Council Collection and the V&A, London.

Related books

Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
Josef Koudelka, Koudelka Gypsies (London: Thames & Hudson, 2019)
Matthew S. Witkovsky ed., Josef Koudelka: Nationality Doubtful (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014)
Josef Koudelka, Chaos (London: Phaidon, 2005)
Michael Simmons, 'The Unknown Snapper: You'll Recognise Josef Koudelka's Photographs. So Why Not the Name?', Guardian, 1 October 1998, p. 9
Rachel Halliburton, 'The Strange Beauty of Wreckage', The Independent, 23 September 1998, p. 10
Katherine Carl, 'Uprootedness and Reception in the Photographs of Josef Koudelka', Art Criticism, Vol. 13, No. 2, 1998, pp. 25-41
Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz, Bystander: A History of Street Photography (London: Thames & Hudson, 1994), pp. 19, 207-12, 298-99, 304
David Lee, 'Josef Koudelka', Art Review, March 1994, n. p.
Czesław Miłosz, Exiles (London: Thames & Hudson, 1988)
Tom Evans, 'Meeting Josef Koudelka: Tom Evans Talks to a Great Photographer', Art and Artists, January 1985, pp. 13-16
Michael Young, 'No Fixed Abode, Just Genius and a Leica', The Times, 29 September 1984, p. 8
Mark Haworth-Booth, Person Choice: A Celebration of Twentieth Century Photographs (London: Victorian & Albert Museum, 1983)
'Anniversary', Sunday Times Magazine, 24 August 1969, pp. 14-19

Public collections

Related organisations

Magnum Photos (member)

Selected exhibitions

Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (2019)
Josef Koudelka: The Making of Landscape, The Signet Library, Edinburgh (2017)
Josef Koudelka: Nationality Doubtful, Getty Center, California, USA (2015-14)
Reconnaissance: Wales, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea (1999)
Josef Koudelka: Transmissions from behind the Iron Curtain / Theatre Photography 1964–1970 / Invasion 1968, Lyttelton Circle Foyer, Royal National Theatre, London (1998)
Exiles, Ffotogallery, Cardiff (1998)
Contacts: Wales, Cardiff Bay Arts Trust, Cardiff (1998)
Site Work: Architecture in Photography Since Early Modernism, The Photographers Gallery, London (1991)
The Animal in Photography 1843-1985, The Photographer's Gallery, London (1986)
Josef Koudelka, Hayward Gallery, London (1984)
Gitans: la Fin du Voyage, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1977)
Concerning Photography: Some Thoughts About Reading Photographs, The Photographers Gallery, London (1977)
A Contemporary Compendium of Photography, The Photographers Gallery, London (1976)
Gypsies, Gordon Fraser Gallery, London (1975)
Two Views: Photographs of British Towns as Seen by Eight Photographers, The Photographers Gallery, London (1973)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Josef Koudelka]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Josef Koudelka photographer