Josef Koudelka Industry On View Mar 29 – Apr 27, 2024 New York Exhibition DetailsJosef KoudelkaIndustryMar 29 – Apr 27, 2024Gallery540 West 25th StreetNew YorkPressPress ReleaseConnect (opens in a new window) @josef_koudelka (opens in a new window) @pacegalleryAbove: Josef Koudelka, Azerbaijan, 1999 © Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos Pace is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Josef Koudelka at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. On view from March 29 to April 27, this will be the artist’s first solo show in New York in nearly a decade, bringing together six large-scale panoramas he created between 1997 and 2010 as part of a project titled Industries. The exhibition will also include a display of small-scale, accordion-style maquettes of Mission Photographique Transmanche, Beyrouth Centre Ville, The Black Triangle, Reconnaissance-Wales, Lime Stone, Teatro del Tempo, Camargue, Piemonte, WALL, Ruins, and Solac. This presentation at Pace coincides with the release of Josef Koudelka: Next, the definitive and only authorized biography of the artist, published by Aperture. The book will be available for purchase on-site at the gallery during the run of the exhibition.Born in Czechoslovakia in 1938, Koudelka trained as an aeronautical engineer but began photographing Romani people—their everyday lives, their struggles, and their traditions—mainly in central European countries in the early 1960s, making a full-time commitment to photography later that decade. In 1968, he photographed the Soviet invasion of Prague, publishing his works under the initials P.P. (Prague photographer). Koudelka, who was anonymously awarded the Overseas Press Club’s Robert Capa Gold Medal for those photographs, left Czechoslovakia seeking political asylum in England, with assistance from the Magnum Photos cooperative, in 1970. His first book, Gypsies, was released by Aperture in 1975, and he has since produced more than a dozen publications of his work.Koudelka’s interest in the social and political dimensions of photography, evident in his earliest bodies of work, would endure through the following decades. He has been working in large-format, panoramic photography since 1986, capturing images of changing landscapes around the world—places that have been reshaped, altered, and in some cases devastated by the effects of industry, time, and war.Adopting a semi-nomadic lifestyle in pursuit of documenting these haunting, elegiac scenes, Koudelka produced deeply interconnected bodies of work that speak to the ways that the weight of history lingers within the natural world. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the artist photographed the Berlin Wall; the streets of Beirut immediately following the Lebanese Civil War; outsized industrialization and pollution in the Black Triangle, a border region between Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic; the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland; and other places forever transformed by sociopolitical turmoil, violence, and environmental destruction.Also among Koudelka’s famous panoramic projects are his Ruins series, for which he photographed more than 200 archeological sites across Greece, Italy, Libya, Syria, and other countries between 1991 and 2015, and his body of work on Israel’s West Bank Wall, which he created over the course of seven trips to Israel and Palestine between 2008 and 2012.“The face of the wounded landscape—it is marked by trouble, by suffering,” Koudelka tells his biographer, Melissa Harris. “It is the same as the face of people who have a difficult life. I am interested in real people, real faces ... In this wounded landscape, I admire the fight for survival ... Nature is stronger than man.”The artist’s upcoming exhibition with Pace in New York, his first solo show in the city since 2015, will be presented on the gallery’s seventh floor against sweeping views of the Chelsea skyline. Measuring some nine feet in width, each of the six monumental panoramas that Koudelka has selected for the exhibition—captured across the United States, Germany, Italy, Azerbaijan, and Israel between 1997 and 2010—tells a different story. Read More Featured Works Josef Koudelka, Israel, 2009, inkjet print mounted to aluminum, 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Learn More Close modal Josef Koudelka Israel 2009 inkjet print mounted to aluminum 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Josef Koudelka, Azerbaijan, 1999, inkjet print mounted to aluminum, 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Learn More Close modal Josef Koudelka Azerbaijan 1999 inkjet print mounted to aluminum 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Josef Koudelka, Germany, 1997, inkjet print mounted to aluminum, 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Learn More Close modal Josef Koudelka Germany 1997 inkjet print mounted to aluminum 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Josef Koudelka, USA, 2000, inkjet print mounted to aluminum, 32-7/8" × 99-13/16" (83.5 cm × 253.5 cm), image 36-7/8" × 103-13/16" (93.7 cm × 263.7 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-1/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.1 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Learn More Close modal Josef Koudelka USA 2000 inkjet print mounted to aluminum 32-7/8" × 99-13/16" (83.5 cm × 253.5 cm), image 36-7/8" × 103-13/16" (93.7 cm × 263.7 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-1/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.1 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Josef Koudelka, Italy, 2004, inkjet print mounted to aluminum, 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Learn More Close modal Josef Koudelka Italy 2004 inkjet print mounted to aluminum 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Josef Koudelka, Germany, 2010, inkjet print mounted to aluminum, 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Learn More Close modal Josef Koudelka Germany 2010 inkjet print mounted to aluminum 32-7/8" × 100-1/16" (83.5 cm × 254.2 cm), image 36-7/8" × 104-1/16" (93.7 cm × 264.3 cm), paper and mount 44-1/8" × 111-5/16" × 2-1/4" (112.1 cm × 282.7 cm × 5.7 cm), frame Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back About the ArtistJosef Koudelka began his career as an aeronautical engineer in Prague and Bratislava, and began photographing stage productions for theater magazines. After documenting gypsy culture in Romania, Slovakia, and Western Europe, he committed to photography full-time in 1967.Learn More Journal View All Museum Exhibitions Bibliotheque Nationale Presents "Josef Koudelka: Ruines" Sep 15, 2020 Overview Featured Works About the Artist Journal