![]() ![]() His work is also owned by prestigious institutions like the Centre Pompidou and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The Museum is thus becoming one of the few institutions to have in its collections and care such a large set of Koudelka’s work. This contributes greatly to the uniqueness of the set of photographs he is donating to the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. Today, Koudelka’s photographs are widely appreciated primarily for their high artistic value and also for the fact that he has never made a large number of prints some of the earliest photographs exist in only several copies. The last section of the exhibition consists of the monumental Panoramas, large-format photographs that were made over three decades, in which he charts out the influence human beings have had on the contemporary landscape. ![]() It consists of photographs capturing feelings of alienation, expulsion, and the impossibility of return. The Exiles series took Koudelka twenty-five years to make. It was the reason that he was forced to leave the country in 1970. Invasion 68, his large reportage series, has played a particularly important role in Koudelka’s life. The next two series were made in parallel – Koudelka’s key work, Gypsies, which is today widely considered a classic of world photography, and the Theatre series, in which he takes the stylization of form to the extreme, with striking graphic images displaying what is now perceived as Koudelka’s unmistakable style in the theatre photography of that period. The next section, called Experiments, consists of early studies, which are important for comprehending Koudelka’s the originality. The first, called Beginnings, consists of rare vintage prints from the late 1950s and early 1960s, which were made by Koudelka for his first exhibition, at the Semafor theatre, Prague, in 1961. The exhibition is arranged chronologically in seven sections, each comprising an individual thematic series. It is also a celebration of the eightieth birthday of this leading figure of contemporary photography. This large retrospective exhibition is being held at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague to mark the exceptionally generous gift that Josef Koudelka is making to his native land. ![]()
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