Josef Koudelka: Returning

A 300-page, almost 7 pounds weighting publication, accompanies the retrospective held on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Josef Koudelka, one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. Just like the Prague exhibition itself, the third and so far the largest version of the catalog, which for the first time combined Koudelka’s retrospective with a number of personal documents (in the US on the occasion of the exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute and The Getty Museum in Los Angeles under the name Nationality Doubtful and later in the Spanish version at the Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid), should be a definitive form, a culmination of a lifetime of carefully selected self-image of a man and a creator. Koudelka considers the book form of its cycles a manual for the layout of future exhibitions and, more generally, a guide for the treatment and interpretation of his legacy. In addition to local authors of the texts, the extended version of the book introduces, for example, a combination of previously separated exhibitions of Gypsies or a revised presentation of Exiles. The graphic designer of both the catalog and the exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts in Prague is Aleš Najbrt.