Sometimes up to 3200 ASA.Īfter Gypsies, he moved away from wide-angle to a Leica 35 and 50 mm lens on a Leica M rangefinder. He shot this project at a max of a 30th of a second on an East German 400 ASA movie film, but pushed it as far as possible in a hot developer. Koudelka used an Exacta camera with a 25-millimeter Flektogon f4 lens for his first project photographing the Gypsies. Gear: Cameras: Leica M, S2 / Lens: 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, and panoramic Complete devotion and immersion into his work and subject.More recently, he has shifted his work’s focus from the people to the landscape of Europe. He currently resides in France and Prague. In 1987, Koudelka became a French citizen and was able to return to Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1990. Looking at his work is almost like a masterclass in photography. Koudelka has captured darker themes from desolation to despair, but also shows hope from within the human spirit. Starting with his full immersion into capturing the gypsies of Slovakia and Romania, he approached photography as a complete life devotion. Through grants and awards, he’s worked on a variety of large projects around the world, while having more than a dozen books of his work published. Koudelka has famously spent his career and life as sort of a nomadic photographer. He ended up staying for over a decade as a political asylum, but continued to travel around Europe with his camera. With help from Magnum, Koudelka was able to get a British working visa and fled to England in 1970. Koudelka decided to record the happenings of the invasion and his negatives were smuggled to the Magnum Photo agency under a fake name to protect himself and his family. His first big project was photographing gypsies in Romania, but as soon as he returned to Prague, the Soviet Invasion started. While he did focus on photography in his free time, he began work as an aeronautical engineer in Prague and Bratislava.Īfter performing commissioned photography work for theatre magazines, Koudelka decided to quit his engineering career in 1967 and take on full-time work as a photographer. Later he studied engineering at the Czec Technical University in Prague. Profile:Ĭzech photographer famous for his black & white work capturing the human spirit amidst dark landscapes.īorn: January 10, 1938 in Boskovice, Czech RepublicĪs a child, Josef Koudelka started photographing his family and environment with a 6×6 Bakelite camera. I’ll also group them together here every time I add a new one. Unlike the rest of the blog, I’m doing these in a straight profile format to make it easy for quick access to facts, quotes and knowledge on all the masters. * “Master Profiles” is a series profiling all the great photographers of uncontrolled life.

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