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Koudelka’s Gypsies on view @ FORMA, Milan

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

Gypsies is without a doubt one of the most important works of photography of the 20th century.

Last Thursday, Fondazione FORMA per la fotografia opened the much-anticipated “Gypsies by Josef Koudelka”, a world premier exhibition of the work of Josef Koudelka based on his seminal 20th century monograph, Gypsies, the artist’s 9-year photographic survey of the gypsy communities of Eastern Europe. The exhibition revisits the artist’s original intention for the work, based on the original sequencing and maquette prepared in 1968 by Koudelka and graphic designer Milan Kopriva. Koudelka intended to publish the work in Prague, but was forced to flee Czechoslovakia, landing eventually in Paris and leaving the book long unpublished. In 1975, Robert Delpire, Aperture, and Koudelka collaborated to publish Gitans, la fin du voyage (Gypsies, in the English-language edition), a selection of sixty photographs taken in various Roma settlements around East Slovakia. Robert Delpire is currently the subject of  a multi-venue career retrospective exhibition in New York City.

FORMA‘s exhibition of this work calls upon Aperture’s expanded edition, featuring 109 photographs of Roma society taken between 1962 and 1971. Printed under close supervision of the artist, expressly for Forma, the images on view recount the everyday life of gypsy communities in the sixties in Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and occasionally France and Spain.

This exhibit is presented in collaboration with Magnum Photos.


Gypsies by Josef Koudelka
On view through September 16, 2012

Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia
Milan, Italy
39 02.5811.8067

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›› Buy Gypsies by Josef Koudelka (Aperture 2011) for 30% off
›› From the 2011 archive, TIME Lightbox reviews Josef Koudelka’s Gypsies, Revisited

Marvin Heiferman, Photography Changes Everything at ARTBOOK | D.A.P., L.A.

Monday, June 25th, 2012
Spread from Photography Changes Everything by Marvin Heiferman

Join Aperture and ARTBOOK | D.A.P. for a conversation with Marvin Heiferman, leading photography curator and editor of Photography Changes Everything, and special guests Lois Banner, historian and author of numerous biographies, including MM-Personal: From the Private Archive of Marilyn Monroe and the forthcoming Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox; Leo Braudy, author of many books of cultural history, including The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History, and most recently The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon; and Charlotte Cotton, writer and curator.

The panelists will explore photography’s central role in shaping our lives, both public and private, rational and fantastic.

A reception and book signing will follow.

 Special thanks to Arcana Books on the Arts for being the evening’s bookseller.

 This event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs are required and will be accepted until venue capacity is reached at rsvp@dapinc.com.

Heiferman (editor, Photography Changes Everything, Aperture 2012), has focused on the influence of photographic images on culture and history in projects such as Fame After Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999) and Image World: Art and Media Culture at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1989). A contributing editor to Art in America, he serves on the faculty of both the International Center of Photography/Bard College and the School of Visual Art’s MFA programs in photography. He was creative consultant to the Smithsonian Photography Initiative from 2005 to 2011, during which time he conceptualized and curated click! photography changes everything.


Photography Changes Everything: A Conversation with Marvin Heiferman, with special guests Lois Banner, Leo Braudy, and Charlotte Cotton
Thursday, June 28, 2012, 7:00 pm
FREE, RSVP required (rsvp@dapinc.com)

ARTBOOK | Paper Chase showroom
Hollywood, California

Special thanks to the evening’s bookseller, Arcana Books on the Arts.

 

Aperture Announces its Fall 2012 Releases

Thursday, June 7th, 2012

For Fall 2012 Aperture presents a list of new and re-issued publications, from the startling and fresh, to new editions and long-awaited anthologies. Read more about our upcoming releases, and view a slideshow of Fall 2012 cover art below.

Upcoming titles include:

A New American Picture by Doug Rickard
101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides
Petrochemical America by Richard Misrach and Kate Orff
The Ballad of Sexual Dependency by Nan Goldin
Life’s a Beach by Martin Parr
Labyrinth: Daido Moriyama
Aperture Magazine Anthology: The Minor White Years, 1952–1976
The Garden at Orgeval by Paul Strand
• Unbuilt: Louis I. Kahn at Roosevelt Island, Photographs by Barney Kulok, Essay by Steven Holl

September 2012

A New American Picture by Doug Rickard


Doug Rickard’s A New American Picture offers a startling and fresh perspective on American street photography. While on first glance the work looks reassuringly familiar and well within the traditional bounds of the genre, his methodology is anything but conventional. All of the images are appropriated from Google Street View; over a period of two years, Rickard took advantage of the technology platform’s comprehensive image archive to virtually drive the unseen and overlooked roads of America, bleak places that are forgotten, economically devastated, and abandoned. With an informed and deliberate eye, Rickard finds and decodes these previously photographed scenes of urban and rural decay. He rephotographs the machine-made images as they appear on his computer screen, framing and freeing them from their technological origins.

12 1/2 x 9 3/4 in. (31.8 x 24.8 cm); 
144 pages, 90 four-color images; 
Hardcover with jacket; 
ISBN 978-1-59711-219-2
; $60.00; 
September 2012; 
Rights: North America


101 Tragedies of Enrique
 Metinides


101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides is Enrique Metinides’ choice of the 101 key images from his life photographing crime scenes and accidents in Mexico for local newspapers and the nota roja (or “red pages,” for their bloody content) crime press. Accompanying each image, extended captions give his account of the situation depicted, describing the characters and life of the streets, the sadness of families, the criminals, and the heroism of emergency workers—revealing much about himself in the process. Having received his first camera at the age of ten, Metinides became a capable street photographer by the time he was twelve, already working with police and firefighters to get his best shots. Now also found in museum collections around the world, his images are compelling, immediate, sometimes shocking, and always authentic. Selected photographs are also paired with their original newsprint tearsheets, collected by Metinides, the typography of which have inspired the design of this book. The photographs have been compiled by Trisha Ziff, a filmmaker and curator who knows Metinides well, and who also contributes an essay about his life, work, and personality.

8 1/2 x 10 3/8 in. (21.6 x 26.4 cm); 
192 pages, 
150 four-color images; 
Hardcover with jacket; 
ISBN 978-1-59711-211-6
; $50.00/£35.00
; September 2012; 
Rights: World


Petrochemical America
by Richard Misrach and Kate Orff


Petrochemical America features Richard Misrach’s haunting photographic record of Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor, accompanied by landscape architect Kate Orff’s Ecological Atlas—a series of “speculative drawings” developed through research and mapping of data from the region. Their joint effort depicts and unpacks the complex cultural, physical, and economic ecologies along 150 miles of the Mississippi River, from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, an area of intense chemical production that first garnered public attention as “Cancer Alley” when unusual occurrences of cancer were discovered in the region.

This collaboration has resulted in an unprecedented, multilayered document presenting a unique narrative of visual information. Petrochemical America offers in-depth analysis of the causes of decades of environmental abuse along the largest river system in North America. Even more critically, the project offers an extensively researched guidebook to the way in which the petrochemical industry has permeated every facet of contemporary life.

 An exhibition coinciding with the release of the book will take place at Aperture Gallery in fall 2012.

13 1/2 x 10 1/2 in. (34.3 x 26.7 cm); 216 pages (plus 24-page insert), 
150 four-color images; Hardcover; ISBN 978-1-59711-191-1; $80.00/£50.00; September 2012; 
Rights: World


The Ballad of Sexual 
Dependency
by Nan Goldin


The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is a visual diary chronicling the struggle for intimacy and understanding between friends, family, and lovers—collectively described by Nan Goldin as her “tribe.” Her work describes a world that is visceral, charged, and seething with life. First published in 1986, this reissue recognizes the persistent relevance and freshness of Nan Goldin’s cutting-edge photography.

Over the past twenty-five years, the influence of Ballad on photography and other aesthetic realms has continually grown, making the work a contemporary classic. Nan Goldin’s story of urban life on the fringe was the swan song of an era that reached its peak in the early eighties. Yet it has captured an important element of humanity that is transcendent: a need to connect.

This new edition of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency has been printed using new scans and separations created by master-separator Robert Hennessey from Goldin’s original slides and transparencies, rendering them with unparalleled sumptuousness and impact.

10 x 9 in. (25.4 x 22.9 cm); 
148 pages, 
126 four-color images; 
Clothbound with jacket
; ISBN 978-1-59711-208-6; 
$50.00/£35.00; 
September 2012; 
Rights: World (excluding France)


Life’s a Beach
by Martin Parr


In the United Kingdom, one is never more than seventy-five miles away from the coast. With this much shoreline, it’s not surprising that there is a strong British tradition of photography by the seaside. American photographers may have given birth to street photography, but according to photographer Martin Parr, “in the UK, we have the beach!” Here, he asserts, people can relax, be themselves, and show off all those traces of mildly eccentric British behavior.

First released in a signed and numbered limited-edition run, Life’s a Beach shows Parr at its best, startling us with the moments of captured absurdity and immersing us in the rituals and traditions associated with beach life all over the world. A trade edition will follow in spring 2013.

11 x 9 in. (27.9 x 22.9 cm); 
98 four-color images;
 Slipcased hardcover; 
Signed and numbered limited-edition;
 ISBN 978-1-59711-224-6; 
$150.00/£95.00;
 September 2012;
 Rights: World (excluding France)


October 2012

Labyrinth: Daido Moriyama


Throughout Daido Moriyama’s extensive career, he has continually sought new ways of presenting and recontextualizing his work, frequently recasting his images through the use of different printing techniques, installation, or re-editing and re-formatting. In each iteration, images both old and new take on changed and newly charged significance. This volume, created during preparations for several international survey exhibitions, offers both the photographer and the viewer the opportunity to consider the photographer’s life work in a fresh light.

Moriyama has always sought meaning in the raw accumulation and gestalt of sequences of images. Labyrinth makes public an exercise in reconsideration that the photographer has assigned to himself. In opening up this private process of re-examination to a wider public, Moriyama continues to challenge the viewer and his own practice, as well as the larger mechanisms by which photography functions and creates meaning.

11 3/4 x 13 3/4 in. (30 x 35 cm); 
304 pages, 
300 duotone images; 
Paperback with flaps; 
ISBN 978-1-59711-217-8
; $80.00/£50.00; 
October 2012
 Rights: World (excluding Japan)


Aperture Magazine
 Anthology: The Minor White Years, 1952–1976


Published on the occasion of Aperture magazine’s sixtieth anniversary, this is the first anthology of Aperture magazine ever published. This long-awaited volume will provide a selection of the best critical writing from the first twenty-five years of the magazine—the period spanning the tenure of cofounder and editor Minor White.

The texts and visuals in this anthology were selected by Peter C. Bunnell, White’s protégé and an early member of the Aperture staff, who went on to become a major force in photography as an influential writer, curator, and professor. Several documents from Aperture’s founders and individual articles are reproduced in facsimile, and the book is enlivened by other distinctive elements, including a portfolio of each cover, and a selection of epigrams and editorials that appeared at the front of each issue. An extensive index of every contributor to the first twenty-five years of the magazine makes this an indispensible resource.

6 1/2 x 9 3/8 in. (16.5 x 23.8 cm); 
448 pages
, 150 four-color images;
 Hardcover with jacket; 
ISBN 978-1-59711-196-6;
$39.95/£25.00;
 October 2012
 Rights: World


The Garden at Orgeval
by Paul Strand


After a lifetime of working on a series of “collective portraits” in far-flung places such as Mexico; Ghana; Italy; Tir a’Mhurain, Scotland; and his adoptive country, France, an aging Paul Strand decided to concentrate on still lifes and the stony beauty of his own garden at Orgeval, France, as a site in which to distill his discoveries as a photographer. The work that constitutes The Garden at Orgeval is marked by close and careful study of the forms and patterns within nature—of tiny button-shaped flowers, cascading winter branches, and fierce snarls of twigs. While the images bear the same directness and precise vision that is quintessentially Strand, the work also reflects a growing metaphorical turn.

Renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz—whose own affinity toward Strand’s Orgeval series stems from a lifetime of photographing in different genres and ultimately returning to nature as an enduring subject—has selected the photographs in the book, and he responds to them in an accompanying personal essay, reflecting on issues, including the contemplation of one’s garden, and growing old. Beautifully produced in a modest size, in the manner of a volume of poems, this book’s task is to do credit to Strand’s final work, both as an individual and as a key figure in Modernist photography.

8 x 10 3/8 in. (20.3 x 26.4 cm); 
96 pages, 
42 duotone images 
Clothbound; 
ISBN 978-1-59711-124-9; 
$45.00/£30.00; 
October 2012, Rights: World


Unbuilt: Louis I. Kahn at Roosevelt Island
(Photographs by Barney Kulok, Essay by Steven Holl)


In October 2012, Four Freedoms Park—the last design Louis I. Kahn completed before his untimely death in 1974—will open on Roosevelt Island in New York City, over forty years after its commission as a memorial to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Barney Kulok’s black-and-white photographs of the building site function as a meditation on the materiality and formal underpinnings of Kahn’s architectural thinking. Unbuilt is at once a historical record and a multilayered visual investigation of form and the subtleties of texture—elements of fundamental importance to Kahn’s philosophies. As architect Steven Holl writes, “Kulok’s photographs free the subject matter from a literal interpretation of the site. They stand as ‘Equivalents’ to the words about material, light, and shadow that Louis Kahn often spoke.”

11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.5 cm); 80 pages, 40 duotone images; Hardcover with jacket; Signed and numbered limited edition of 1,000 copies; 987-1-59711-TKT-K; $TK.TK/£TK.TK; October 2012, Rights: World

For all press inquiries please contact:

Barbara Escobar
Publicity and Events Manager
212.946.7123
bescobar(at)aperture.org
publicity(at)aperture.org

 

Sylvia Plachy: Lecture, Workshop, and Exhibition

Wednesday, May 30th, 2012

© Sylvia Plachy

The Center for Photography at Woodstock
59 Tinker Street
Woodstock, NY
(845) 679-9957

Lecture: Saturday, June 2, 8:00 pm
Admission: $7 / $5 for members, seniors, and students.

Photographer Sylvia Plachy, a contributor to the Village Voice and The New Yorker for many years, will be discussing her career as a master storyteller.

Workshop: Saturday, June 2–Sunday, June 3
Click here for tuition costs.

In conjunction with this lecture is the workshop, Editing the Photo Essay. Participants will be able to edit and sequence their photographs alongside Plachy, in order to begin to build a photo essay, book, or exhibition.

 

This Side of Paradise

Exhibition on view through June 5, 2012
Thursday – Sunday, 1:00 – 7:00 pm
FREE

The Andrew Freedman Home
1125 Grand Concourse
Bronx, NY
(718) 293-8100

No Longer Empty, a not-for-profit arts organization, presents a group exhibition in the newly reopened Andrew Freedman Home. The Home was once built to be a haven for the rich elderly who had lost their fortunes. Bequeathed by millionaire Andrew Freedman, the Home provided not only food and shelter but all the accoutrements of a rich and civilized life style – white glove dinner service, a grand ballroom, a wood-paneled library, a billiard room, and a social committee who organized concerts, opera performances, and the like.

Referencing this quixotic history, This Side of Paradise references the past and reconnect the vision of Andrew Freedman to today’s Bronx and its realities. Sylvia Plachy is one of the featured artists and she is showing photographs that were published in 1980 for an article written by Vivian Gornick for The Village Voice. The images capture the lives of the residents at this time, showing them at their social hour, reading, or in silent contemplation.

Sylvia Plachy has appeared in Aperture issues 207 and 206. She also has two Aperture-published books, Self Portrait with Cows Going Home and Goings On About Town: Photographs for the New Yorker.

Eirik Johnson: Camps & Cabins Artist Talk

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Elwha River Dam, Washington; from Sawdust Mountain, 2009 © Eirik Johnson

Seattle native and 2012 Neddy Award winner Eirik Johnson presents an artist talk at G. Gibson Gallery this Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 2:00 pm where his third solo exhibition Camps & Cabins, large scale photographs of Pacific Northwest mushroom hunters and their makeshift structures, is currently on view (through May 26, 2012).

Johnson, the photographer behind the 2009 monograph Sawdust Mountain, has had a long history documenting the Pacific Northwest, earning himself a role as forerunner of the second generation of topographic photographers. Sawdust Mountain was a four-year exploration of the “tenuous relationship between industries reliant upon natural resources and the communities they support,” throughout Oregon, Washington, and Northern California, he explains in a video interview conducted at Aperture Gallery.

Work from that series has since been made into a limited-edition print, Freshly Felled Trees, as well as a limited-edition portfolio of three archival pigment prints, Adult Books, Firewood, and Truck for Sale, (Port Angeles, Washington), Weyerhaeuser Sorting Yard Along the Chehalis River, (Cosmopolis, Washington), and The Road to Forks, (Washington), all available at Aperture.

Johnson’s portfolio, West Oakland Walk, exploring the beauty of an urban landscape shaped by poverty, was also featured in Aperture issue 185.

Read a brief review of Camps & Cabins in Seattle Weekly or Visual Art Source, and hear what Johnson has to say about the project himself in a Q&A with CityArts magazine.

Artist Talk:
Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 2:00 pm
FREE

Exhibition on view:
April 19 – May 26, 2012

G. Gibson Gallery
300 South Washington Street
Seattle, Washington 98104
(206) 587-5751

artMRKT San Francisco and Richard Misrach

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

“Showcasing new artists alongside historical material, artMRKT will create an ideal context for the discovery, discussion and placement of artwork.”

The San Francisco iteration of artMRKT marks the start of the brand’s 2012 modern and contemporary fair season. Currently in it’s second year, the San Francisco fair will combine the work of seventy leading galleries with a thoughtful program of art events and exhibitions at the fair venue and throughout the city. Aperture will be on site in 2012 with limited-edition prints, books, and the latest from Aperture magazine in tow, including our latest prints “Model Dining Room,” from the series Occupied Territory by Lynne Cohen, and “Animal (127)” by Elliot Ross.

The 2012 re-issue of Lynne Cohen’s first monograph, Occupied Territory, is also forthcoming from Aperture, “an exploration of domestic and institutional interior spaces—sometimes idealized, sometimes standardized, humorous, and disquieting.” “Model Dining Room” is a piece of this larger puzzle, representing Cohen’s visual exploration of interior space as simulated experience.

We also recommend joining acclaimed artist Richard Misrach, whose lauded Golden Gate is being reissued in a new oversized edition for the iconic bridge’s 75th anniversary, for the weekend’s keynote address plus a book signing on Saturday, May 19th.

Aperture at artMRKT San Francisco
Thursday, May 17, 2012–Sunday, May 20, 2012

Admission Required

Concourse Exhibition Center
Booth 209
San Francisco, California

›› Buy Lynne Cohen’s limited-edition print, “Model Dining Room
›› Buy the limited-edition print “Animal (127)” by Elliot Ross
›› Sign up to be notified when Lynne Cohen’s re-issued monograph, Occupied Territory, is available.

 

Questions Without Answers Launch @ VII Gallery

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
Image courtesy of VII

Join Phaidon at VII Gallery on Thursday, May 3rd during the exhibition of Questions Without Answers to celebrate the launch of the long-awaited book of the same name, published in conjunction with the 10th Anniversary of the founding of VII agency.

This major work presents a remarkable sequence of photo-stories from pioneering photo agency VII, documenting world history as we have experienced it since the end of the Cold War. The 11 extraordinarily talented photographers who are part of this agency work at the cutting edge of digital photojournalism, committed to recording social and cultural change as it happens around the world. Each brings an individual vision to the agency – some choosing to tackle dramatic events head-on, others pursuing more idiosyncratic, personal projects – but all share a commitment to their individual subjects and to their belief that the act of communication provides hope even in the most extreme situations.

Questions Without Answers is an ambitious book featuring a strikingly broad selection of photo stories. Photos documenting Barack Obama giving a speech on Afghanistan to American troops sit alongside a collection of portraits featuring famous cultural figures such as David Bowie and Bernardo Bertolucci. We move from an exploration of the spread and impact of AIDS in Asia to dispatches from the current economic crisis and its effect on those working in finance. The crucial work done by VII in documenting conflict – environmental, social and political, both violent and non-violent – is also represented, including stories from the war in Iraq, the crisis in Darfur and the terrible events of 9/11.

With an introduction by the eminent David Friend, the former director of photography at Life magazine, this book is an important, moving and compelling record of the world we live in.

The book includes work by Stephanie Sinclair, and Lynsey Addario, both of whom have been featured in Aperture Magazine and The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture 2011).

Questions Without Answers
Book Launch and Reception

Thursday, May 3, 2012, 7-9pm

VII Gallery
Brooklyn, New York

›› Buy The New York Times Magazine Photographs for 30% off.

Delpire & Co., New York City

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012


 

As part of our sixtieth anniversary celebration, Aperture Foundation, in collaboration with our partners, presents the exhibition Delpire & Co. featuring a half century of achievement in the life and career of visionary French publisher, editor, and curator Robert Delpire.

Over the past sixty years, the eyes and instincts of Robert Delpire have shaped much of the world’s understanding of photography. A prolific publisher and exhibition organizer, with a razor-sharp comprehension of the graphic arts, Delpire has had a defining hand in the careers of many of the master photographers of recent history.

“Nous avons une autre conception du lecteur”, André François, 1972; “Qui êtes-vous Polly Maggoo”, poster for film directed by William Klein, produced by Robert Delpire, 1965; Henri Matisse, France, 1944, photograph by Henri Cartier- Bresson.

Delpire & Co. (Delpire et Cie in the original French) was one of the highlights of the Rencontres d’Arles in summer 2009, and was subsequently given a major presentation at la Maison Européenne de la Photographie (related video) in Paris from October 2009 to January 2010—to which Vingt Paris Magazine said, “Savor it”—with the continued support of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.

The exhibition showcases Delpire’s rise to prominence in the world of photography through his pioneering and seminal work in magazine (see: Neuf, Le Nouvel Observateur, Photo Poche) and book publishing—titles including Gypsies (Aperture 2011) and Koudelka (Aperture 2007)— films, curatorship, and advertising for the past fifty years.

Delpire & Co. will be divided among four different venues, creating altogether a comprehensive exhibition on Delpire’s many initiatives. Howard Greenberg Gallery and Pace/MacGill Gallery will also have exhibitions concurrently on view in celebration of Robert Delpire’s life and work.

–––

Delpire & Co. Exhibition
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
6:00–8:00 pm
Exhibition on view: Thursday, May 10, 2012–Thursday, July 19, 2012

FREE

Aperture Gallery
New York, New York

›› Click here for details on all the exhibitions and events.
›› Join the conversation on Instagram and Twitter using #Delpire
›› Buy Gypsies, Photographs by Josef Koudelka w/ essay by Will Guy for 30% off.

Burke + Norfolk

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

2011 © Simon Norfolk

The Crawford Art Gallery presents Photographs from the War in Afghanistan by John Burke and Simon Norfolk. Burke was the first photographer to make pictures in Afghanistan while accompanying British forces in the late 1880’s. Fast forward to present day, Norfolk’s work follows the footsteps of Burke. His images are a contemporary response to Burke’s war scenes, presented alongside one another, modern parallels and similar vantage points included.

Accompanying the exhibition is a short film by Simon Norfolk, which discusses John Burke’s photography and both of their relationships with Afghanistan.

Simon Norfolk has appeared in Aperture issue 188 and is featured in The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture 2011).

Photographs from the War in Afghanistan by John Burke and Simon Norfolk
April 20–June 30, 2012

Crawford Art Gallery

Emmet Place
Cork City, Ireland
+353 (0)21 480 5042

———

›› Buy The New York Times Magazine Photographs ($52.50, available here)
›› Order Aperture 188 ($14.80, available here)

Invasion 68: Prague

Friday, April 27th, 2012
Warsaw Pact troops invade Prague. In front of the Radio Headquarters. Prague, Czechoslovakia, August 1968; from Invasion 68: Prague (c) Josef Koudelka

August 21, 1968. Hours after 30-year-old Josef Koudelka–then nascent career photographer–returned to Prague, having spent the past several years documenting the lives of Romanian gypsies, Soviet tanks suddenly cross the Czechoslovakian border. 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 2000 tanks head to Prague and occupy the capitol.

“Our city is experiencing perhaps the most trying moment in our recent history,” the Municipal Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist party of Prague announces. The country, then under the sphere of Soviet influence, had been occupied by foreign armies several times before, but never by troops from allied, supposedly friendly countries.

According to the a statement issued by TASS, the Soviet Press Agency earlier that day, the USSR made an appeal to Warsaw pact countries for immediate assistance, including armed forces, “to the fraternal Czechoslovak people.” They said the request was made “because of the emergent threat to the socialist system and statehood provided for by the constitution of Czechoslovakia.”

The “threat” comes as news to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which broadcasts a statement calling upon “all citizens of the republic to remain calm and not to put up a resistance to the advancing troops because defense of the frontiers is now impossible.”

As tensions mount, ‘Prague’, the Free Legal Radio Transmitter, surrounded by Soviet infantrymen broadcasts a reiteration: “Friends… any resistance to the superior force is utterly futile. This is not defeatism; our only chance is in our preventing bloodshed, because bloodshed makes no sense at all in the present circumstances. Please remain calm, as calm as possible.”

Despite a largely passive and civil resistance, 72 Czechs and Slovaks loose their lives, hundreds others are wounded.

Warsaw Pact tanks invade Prague. Prague, Czechoslovakia, August 1968; from Invasion 68: Prague (c) Josef Koudelka

Koudelka had never covered a news event at that point. He spent the first seven days of the invasion making a series of stunning, emotionally charged images in central Prague. The photographs he managed to have smuggled out of the country and a year later distributed anonymously by Magnum Photos. They earned him the Robert Capa Award, though he could not claim authorship until 16 years later when threats to his family had ceased.

Nearly 250 of these images were published, many for the first time, 40 years after the event in the monograph Invasion 68: Prague (Aperture 2008). Select photographs paired with related texts, including radio transcripts and eyewitness testimonies, are now part of a traveling exhibition opening in Porto Alegre, Brazil this Sunday, April 29, 2012 (at FestFotoFoA through May 27, 2012).

Protesting the Warsaw Pact troops invasion. Prague. Wenceslas Square, August 1968; from Invasion 68: Prague (c) Josef Koudelka

“The invasion of Czechoslovakia was meant ‘to restore order,’ to return a country that had broken off its chain to the position of an obedient vassal,” write Jiri Hoppe, Jiri Suk, and Jaroslav Cuhra in their introduction to the monograph. But, “urgent appeals were made to avoid violence,” and the tanks and assault rifles were “met by a wave of words and gestures.”

One mode of resistance was called the ‘anonymous town,’ in which “the names of streets, institutions, government offices and road signs were painted over with the aim of making it difficult or impossible for the soldiers to get their bearings in an unknown environment.” Substituted instead were wall scribblings with messages like, “Moscow – 1,800 km.”

Koudelka’s series, “is not a chronological record,” he writes, “although the historical sequence of events during the first week of the occupation is take into account. Rather, the intent is to evoke the atmosphere of those days.”

Exhibition on view:
Sunday, April 29, 2012–Sunday, May 27, 2012

FestFotoPoA
Rua Sete de Setembro, 1028
Porto Alegre, Brazil