Josef Koudelka: Diaries

A rare glimpse into the mind and artistic process of one of the world's greatest photographers.

Distilled from sixty-nine journals kept over the course of fifty-plus years, Josef Koudelka: Diaries offers a look inside the mind and artistic process of the iconoclastic Czech photographer renowned for a life in exile and legendary projects on the Roma, the 1968 Soviet-led invasion in Prague, and the devastating impact humans have on the landscape. Facsimile pages from the diaries, along with images by the photographer, including self-portraits, lend the volume an immediacy and authenticity. As curator Tomás Pospěch writes, "Koudelka's diaries are a 'cookbook' of classic photography. He associated with the most renowned photographers. His notes sum up his rich experience, including with the now-vanishing technology of analog black-and-white photography. His remarks, quips, and stories reappear, just as he repeatedly made resolutions, affirmed the rules he had adopted, and recalled earlier events and dreams." Diaries is a perfect companion to Josef Koudelka: Next (2023), the visual biography by Melissa Harris.

Tomás Pospěch is curator of photography at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague where he oversees the Josef Koudelka Collection. Since 1997 he has taught at the Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian University, Opava. He is the author of more than sixty books, including Fotografie 1938-2000 v recenzích, textech, dokumentech (Czech photography, 1938-2000, in reviews, articles, and documents, 2010). He has written about Koudelka's work for publications such as Returning (2017), Theatre (2020), Deníky (2021), and Ruins (2024). He has organized numerous exhibitions, including Czech Documentary Photography (with Vladimír Birgus, 2009), Photographs of Czech Society (2009), and Ruins (2024).

Josef Koudelka (born in Moravia, Czechoslovakia, 1938; naturalized French, 1987) began his career as an aeronautical engineer before turning fulltime to photography in the late 1960s. In 1968 he photographed the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1969, he was anonymously awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal for the photographs that were published with the initials P.P. (Prague photographer). Koudelka left Czechoslovakia seeking political asylum, in 1970, and shortly thereafter joined Magnum Photos. His awards include the Prix Nadar, Grand Prix National de la Photographie, HCB Award, Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, Medal of Merit from the Czech Republic, and being named Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. Significant exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art and International Center of Photography, New York; Hayward Gallery, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Koudelka's books include Gypsies (1975), Exiles (1988), Black Triangle (1994), Chaos (1999), Invasion 68: Prague (2008), Wall (2013), Ruins (2020), and Next (by Melissa Harris, 2023). He is based in Paris and Prague.

Derek Paton was born in Canada. He holds a BA in international relations from the University of Toronto and an MA in East European area studies from the University of London. He first visited Czechoslovakia in 1985, returning in 1989 as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, Washington, DC, with the good fortune to witness the Velvet Revolution, and since that time has served as a translator from Czech to English.