Wild white hair and beard, but dressed in a drab, olive shirt and combat jacket, Josef Koudelka is like a guerrilla Father Christmas. Wearing scuffed shoes, and with a roughly unceremonious joviality, the Czech photographer appears uncomfortable being stalked around his exhibition by dozens of press with cameras and smartphones, before being cornered into a Q&A session. Once settled, however, he speaks with passion about people, music and the theatricality of life and photography. Commensurate with that, however, is an abiding anger toward injustices and regimes with a history of suppression, whether it is of the people or their culture.
Koudelka¡¯s retrospective at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, covers the photographer¡¯s experiments in graphic black-and-white composition from the early 1960s through the iconic ¡°Gypsies¡± series and landmark photojournalism work of the Soviet crackdown in his native country in 1968. It continues on to his more recent landscape work done in a panorama format.
As befitting someone who considers himself a wanderer and exile (his only advice to young photographers is ¡°buy good shoes¡°), Koudelka¡¯s work has moved around in terms of genre and format over a career spanning more than half a century. There is the dramatic active framing of snapshots capturing decisive moments, but also the distanced, static portraiture reminiscent of August Sander¡¯s documentary photography ¡ª both of which contrast with the generally unpeopled large-scale landscapes of later years.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.