A gift of world importance. 30 boxes from Josef Koudelka arrived in Prague, they hardly take pictures anymore
A truck made by the renowned Kunsttrans company, which specializes in art transportation, arrived in Prague from Paris last week. Four workers pulled 30 large wooden boxes from it to the depository of the Museum of Applied Arts, which received the second part of a donation from the world-famous photographer and so far the only Czech member of the famous Magnum Photos agency Josef Koudelka.
“The transport of works had to be postponed due to the pandemic, so I am glad that we managed to transport this second large part of the gift from Paris,” says the photographer through Irena Šorfová, curator and representative of the Josef Koudelka Foundation.
He started negotiating with the museum about the extensive gift 14 years ago. In 2018, the Museum of Applied Arts presented a selection of the donation at the magnificent Returns retrospective, commemorating Koudelka’s then 80th birthday.
“Of course, the transfer of this set of photographs to Prague is a certain completion for me, but the work on the donation does not end, with Irena Šorfová and Tomáš Pospěch, who is in charge of processing the donation for the Museum of Applied Arts, we are preparing a publication “to find out what I have at my disposal. I would like to keep a comprehensive collection of the best I have created in my life in Prague,” says the eighty-three-year-old photographer.
Curator Šorfová reminds that there is great interest in Koudelka’s films in the world, they are represented in the collections of the Paris Center Pompidou and Maison Européenne de la Photographie, the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago or the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. “Nevertheless, foreign museums acquire works in their collections mainly in the form of purchases, which is one of the reasons why Josef Koudelka donates such a gift to his native country, especially not only in the Czech Republic, but also pays attention worldwide,” Irena Šorfová.
Next to Josef Sudek
The Museum of Applied Arts is not the only recipient of Koudelka’s donation, although it certainly wins its most extensive work. The two ensembles will also enrich the collection of the National Gallery in Prague: the first cycle called De-creazione fotograf created in 2013 for the presentation of the Vatican at the Venice Biennale. These are 18 large-format images depicting the irreversible human intervention in the landscape and were exhibited in the Trade Fair Palace three years ago.
The second team is a collection of photographs from the Gypsies collection, several of which come from the 7 + 7 exhibition, which was prepared in 1967 by the photography historian Anna Fárová for the Špála Gallery.
A selection of 110 photographs from all the pivotal cycles of Josef Koudelka, a native of Valchov near Boskovice in South Moravia, will also focus on Moravia. In addition to other collections, the Moravian Gallery in Brno also acquires photographs that are directly related to its collection. It contains the cycle Sad Landscape by Josef Sudek, which are panoramic images from the Ore Mountains. “Koudelka’s Black Triangle will be added to them in parallel. These are also panoramic photographs of the industrial landscape that Koudelka took in the Most region,” explains curator Tomáš Pospěch.
The Historical Museum, which is part of the National Museum in Prague, has shown interest in the Invasion 68 ensemble, which captures the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. “Recently, they also set up a collection of photographs there; in the Historical Museum, Koudelka’s work will have only a slightly different context,” said the curator. A series of 75 exhibition panels with 169 photographs from the Invasion 68 ensemble will go to the Historical Museum. This ensemble was also brought from Paris last week.
Another place where Koudelka’s photographs will be permanently represented is the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, where he had a large exhibition called Ruins last summer. In it, he completed 30 years of photographing the landscape in the Mediterranean, where he captured the transience of time.
Over 100 panoramic black-and-white images, taken at memorial sites of extinct civilizations in the Mediterranean, were hung from the ceiling in a wide, black-painted space. “I think the installation of this exhibition was unique and it is a pity that due to the pandemic it could not be seen by so many people. The exhibition is currently presented in Rome and this autumn it should travel to Athens,” says Josef Koudelka. After the end of their foreign presentations, these films will also be added to the gift of the Czech Republic.
He often slept outside
Josef Koudelka celebrated his 83rd birthday in January. “He is in amazing condition for his age. For how much he walked and traveled in his life, he often slept in difficult conditions outside, it is admirable how well he is doing,” thinks Tomáš Pospěch.
When Koudelka returned from Yemen two years ago, he allegedly stated that he had already photographed everything and that the archive needed to be processed. He hasn’t photographed since. Recently, he’s been scanning scanned “contacts,” as the photographic prints of the negatives are called. “I go through my life’s work on the computer. It’s 30,000 contacts, that’s about one million photos,” says the author from Paris, where he was held back by a deteriorating epidemic situation. The world-famous photographer, who lived in exile after 1968, considers Prague his home after many years of work.
He cares that his work is well taken care of in the Czech Republic and that photographs can travel to exhibitions. “I hope that the museums will take proper care of this. The Minister of Culture, Lubomír Zaorálek, assured me personally about this, and in whose presence we should officially close the gift this summer, if the pandemic allows. among other things, he took care of my work in the future, supervised compliance with the conditions of the gift and would be a partner institution for the mentioned institutions, “adds Josef Koudelka.
After a truck from Paris unloaded in Prague, the Museum of Applied Arts has a lot of work to do. It is necessary to provide technologically individual space for storage of negatives, administrative items to process, provide restoration, scans, descriptions and everything needed to prepare the publication of the gift list. “If we realize that Josef Koudelka is currently one of the most valued photographers in the world, these are truly incalculable values,” adds curator Irena Šorfová.
Josef Koudelka
He was born in 1938 in Boskovice in Moravia. Originally an aeronautical engineer, he began photographing the world of several Prague theaters in the late 1950s, as well as the life of Roma in remote settlements. In 1968, he documented the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops, and his pictures were published the following year on the occasion of the invasion anniversary in many foreign magazines under the pseudonym PP (Prague Photographer), without Koudelka knowing in advance.
The pictures of the “anonymous Czech photographer” won the Robert Capa Gold Medal from the American Overseas Press Club and today they are interesting for the classic work of post-war reportage photography.
Koudelka emigrated in 1970, and four years later became the prestigious Magnum Photos agency. He was first accepted as a refuge in Great Britain, and in 1987 he acquired French citizenship.
He has photographed all over the world for Magnum Photos, and has so far published 15 books documenting human faces on the landscape.
Video from Koudelka’s last year’s Parisian exhibition Ruins, which culminated in 30 years of photographing the Mediterranean landscape. | Video: National Library of France