Josef Koudelka – Deníky (Diaries)

#1 min Josef Moucha, Josef Koudelka

9. 5. 2023

#44 EmpathyHistoryPhotobooks

The Association of Professional Photographers of the Czech Republic has announced the Book of the Year 2021 to be a cross-section of half a century of Josef Koudelka's notes (1938). Meanwhile, the bestseller of more than four hundred pages has been reprinted and an English version is slowly being prepared. The original Deníky (Diaries) took two years to prepare. In order to compile a kaleidoscope of memorabilia interspersed with reproductions, photographer and art historian Tomáš Pospěch studied sixty-eight diaries. "It's great that Josef Koudelka decided not to destroy the diaries," he told the Český rozhlas radio station. "He describes how photographers coped with the crisis of photojournalism, how the Magnum agency functioned, how he himself thought about his work." The result is discussed by readers with a bias that matches the critical nature of Koudelka's perception of the international scene.

 

Josef Koudelka. Deníky. (Diaries) Praha: Torst, 2021. ISBN 978-80-7215-690-0.

#44 EmpathyHistoryPhotobooksResearchMemoryDiaryDocumentEmpathyAuthor's review

Josef Moucha

(1956) is a photographer and teacher at the Institute of Creative Photography of Silesian University in Opava. He has published essays Zážitek arény (The Experience of the Arena, 2004), a novella, Mimochodem (By the Way, 2004), essays Obrazy z dějin fotografie české (Images from the History of Czech Photography, 2011) and two picture books, Válka za studena / Fotografie ze základní vojenské služby v Československé lidové armádě (Serving It Cold: Photographs from Basic Training in the Czechoslovak People’s Army, 2017) and Doličné okamžiky (Incriminating Moments, 2018).

Josef Koudelka

started to work in photography in 1958. In 1968, he documented the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, which won the Robert Capa Gold Medal and is now considered a classic work of post-war reportage photography. He has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1974. In 1975, he published the book Gypsies in collaboration with the French publisher Robert Delpire, followed by Exiles in 1988. Since then, Josef Koudelka has published sixteen books dedicated to documenting the human influence on the contemporary landscape.

#44 Empathy

The ability to empathise with others is a construct that has only been around for a few centuries. This does not mean that such a skill did not exist until then. However, the concept of empathy creates a field in which this ability oscillates from understanding the other party to understanding the self. And because such a playground can be quite expansive, and the playing balls of empathy can be ping-ponged from one side to the other, we decided to dedicate an issue of the magazine to this field.

Josef Koudelka – Ruins

#2 min Tomáš Pospěch, Josef Koudelka

Josef Koudelka – Ruins

#46 TourismProfileHistory

What will Prague or New York look like in a thousand or two thousand years? My aim here is not to contribute to the dystopian genre, so popular today. But we do have a sufficient historical experience of the emergence and demise of civilizations. It is therefore not so hard to imagine that where New York City used to stand, waves will beat against the remaining concrete foundations of a few skyscrapers and Prague too will be reduced to the ruins of a few of the most significant buildings – if the city isn’t entirely abandoned, that is. Without depicting these scenes directly, such notions might follow from Josef Koudelka’s newest photographic series, titled Ruins.