15 Facts About Josef Koudelka

Josef Koudelka was born on 10 January 1938 and is a Czech-French photographer.

Josef Koudelka is a member of Magnum Photos and has won awards such as the Prix Nadar, a Grand Prix National de la Photographie, a Grand Prix Henri Cartier-Bresson, and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography.

Josef Koudelka studied at the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1956, receiving a degree in engineering in 1961.

Josef Koudelka staged his first photographic exhibition the same year.

Josef Koudelka began taking commissions from theatre magazines, and regularly photographed stage productions at Prague's Theatre Behind the Gate on a Rolleiflex camera.

Between 1962 and 1971, Josef Koudelka travelled throughout Czechoslovakia and rural Romania, Hungary, France and Spain photographing Romani people.

Josef Koudelka had returned from photographing Romani people in Romania just two days before the Soviet invasion, in August 1968.

Josef Koudelka witnessed and recorded the military forces of the Warsaw Pact as they invaded Prague and crushed reforms of the so-called Prague Spring.

Josef Koudelka continued to wander around Europe with his camera and little else.

Josef Koudelka has had many other books of his work published, including in 2006 the retrospective volume Josef Koudelka.

Josef Koudelka was supported by the Czech art historian Anna Farova.

In 1987, Josef Koudelka became a French citizen, and was able to return to Czechoslovakia for the first time, in 1990.

Josef Koudelka then produced Black Triangle, documenting the wasted landscape in the Podkrusnohori region, the western tip of the Black Triangle's foothills of the Ore Mountains, located between Germany and the Czech Republic.

Josef Koudelka is the father of two daughters, one being Lucina Hartley Koudelka, and a son, Nicola Koudelka.

Josef Koudelka soon moved on to a more personal, in depth photographic study of the Gypsies of Slovakia, and later Romania.