photography in all its forms

Aperture installation shots by Elliot Black Photography

Description:
In 1968 Josef Koudelka was thirty years old. He had committed himself to photography as a full-time career only recently, and had been chronicling the theater and the lives of gypsies, but he had never photographed a news event. That all changed on the night of August 21, when Warsaw Pact tanks invaded the city of Prague, ending the short-lived political freedom in Czechoslovakia that came to be known as the Prague Spring. In the midst of the turmoil of the Soviet-led invasion, Koudelka took to the streets to document this critical moment. It was a major turning point in his life.

Koudelka's photographs of the invasion were miraculously smuggled out of the country. A year after they reached New York, Magnum Photos distributed the images, but credited them to an unknown Czech photographer to avoid reprisals. The intensity and significance of the images earned the still-anonymous photographer the Robert Capa Award. Sixteen years passed before Koudelka could safely acknowledge authorship.

The exhibition, Invasion 68 Prague, is comprised of images personally selected by Josef Koudelka from his extensive archive, and is co-produced with Magnum Photos. Conceived as an installation it features large-scale, ink-jet prints as well as related texts.

In August 2008, Aperture published the monograph of the same title on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the invasion.

This exhibition is made possible, in part, by generous support from Mark and Elizabeth Levine. Additional support provided by HP and Coloredge.

Contents:
The exhibition consists of 70 black-and-white ink-jet prints at 35.75 x 23.25 inches; 4 at 44 x 61.5 inches; and 1 color "document" 11 x 14 inches. The exhibition also includes 1 film and 6 extensive text panels.

Participation Fee:
Please call for further information

Availability:
The exhibition began touring in November 2008 and is available to university galleries through 2012.