Limestone

by Josef Koudelka

"Over a period of two years, Josef Koudelka traveled through the quarries of the Groupe Lhoist in Europe and America. His camera leads us through our sites and Josef shows us that the industrial exploitation of deposits -- whilst providing the society we live in with an indispensable product -- can also bring a fascinating dimension to the landscape. Born less than a kilometre away from a quarry, I had always felt that industrial sites had nothing but a functional aspect and were devoid of any aesthetic interest. Josef Koudelka has opened my eyes to the beauty of these landscapes. Nature is far stronger than any of us. Josef Koudelka's work is a moving account of nature's infinite capacity for asserting itself." From the essay by Gilles A. "Here, the hand of Man is everywhere. Nature is transformed, turned upside down. There is not a square centimetre which has escaped his touch, which has not been carved out, excavated, tamped, or recuperated. Everywhere on the ground the machines have left the trace of their work, showing ever more clearly the presence of cables, pipes, metal girders, steel balls, and dismembered mechanical arms. Nevertheless, we see no one. Here is no human outline to indicate the scale of things, to help us understand their significance. These images show us a world apparently removed from itself. As a result, our eyes must learn to observe, as if for the first and last time, a world of which we believe we are the masters, but actually going beyond what we are capable of imagining, its force rendering derisory the few marks left on its surface. This is a world which is not for Man, a world over which he has little or no sway, a world which suddenly strikes us, rather as when at low tide our eyes seam to reach out to the horizon leaving us with the feeling of being alien to the land which the sea is soon to cover again, like the waters that covered the continents millions of years ago when consciousness had not yet emerged."

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Josef Koudelka was born in Czechoslovakia in 1938. He began his career as an aeronautical engineer, and started photographing gypsies in his spare time in 1962, before turning full-time to photography in the late 1960s. In 1968 Koudelka photographed the Soviet invasion of Prague, publishing his photographs under the initials P.P. (Prague photographer). In 1969, he was anonymously awarded the Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal for the photographs. Koudelka left Czechoslovakia seeking political asylum in 1970, and shortly thereafter he joined Magnum Photos.

In 1975 his first book, Gypsies, was published by Aperture, and subsequent titles include Exiles (1988), Chaos (1999), Invasion 68: Prague (2008), and Wall (2013) and, most recently Ruines (2020). Koudelka has won major awards, such as the Prix Nadar (1978), Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1989), Grand Prix Cartier-Bresson (1991), and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (1992).

Exhibitions of his work have been held at The Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography, New York; Hayward Gallery, London; Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Art Institute of Chicago; and Museum of Decorative Arts and the National Gallery, Prague. In 2012, he was named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. He is currently based in Paris and Prague.