Josef Koudelka
Spišské Bystré

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Artist Josef Koudelka (Czech, born 1938)Czech, born 1938

CultureCzech

Titles

Spišské Bystré

Date1966

Place depictedSpisské Bystré, Slovakia

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 9 1/4 × 14 1/4 in. (23.5 × 36.2 cm)
Sheet: 12 × 16 in. (30.5 × 40.6 cm)

Credit LineGift of Mike and Mickey Marvins

Object number2014.946

Non exposé

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Department

Photography

Special Collections

Marvins Family Collections

Object Type

PHOTOGRAPHS

DescriptionJosef Koudelka began photographing Gypsies in Czechoslovakia in 1961 while studying to be, and then working as, an aeronautical engineer. He became a full-time photographer in 1967, but left Czechoslovakia for political asylum in 1970, living in England and then France. Just before the Russian invasion of Prague in 1968, he had expanded his project on Gypsies to Romania. While in exile, he traveled in the spring and summer months to photograph Roma gatherings in Western Europe, and then edited and printed the images in the winter, publishing his first book on the Gypsy project in 1975. The project is not a traditional documentation but rather acutely visual poetry of human dramas large and small, public and private, with no clear reading. Is this boy running for joy or in fear? Is either house his home, or either woman his mother? The child is the central player in a drama that, for the viewer, has no beginning or end.
ProvenanceAuction; purchased by Michael Marvins and Michele Marvins, Houston; given to MFAH, 2014.
Exhibition History“A Photographer’s Collection: Gifts from Michael and Michele Marvins,” The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, April 4–July 5, 2015.
Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks

Signed on sheet recto in ink: Josef Koudelka

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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