Ruins

by Josef Koudelka (Photographer), Alain Schnapp (Contributor), Héloïse Conésa (Contributor)

Between 1991 and 2015, Josef Koudelka completed an epic journey across twenty countries bordering the Mediterranean, stopping at over 200 Greek and Roman archaeological sites, relentlessly researching the beauty of the ancient world.

Before the Magnum photographer, nobody had attempted to make such a comprehensive photographic record of these artefacts with so much persistence and so little assistance. Koudelka’s aim was to use art to re-appropriate a world that is escaping us and that we could lose – a world where the mind alternates between reason and faith, law and liberty.

Genres: Photography

368 pages, Hardcover

First published May 28, 2020

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.