Josef Koudelka: Diaries

A rare glimpse into the mind and artistic process of one of the world’s greatest photographers.

Distilled from sixty-nine journals kept over the course of fifty-plus years, Josef Koudelka: Diaries offers a look inside the mind and artistic process of the iconoclastic Czech photographer renowned for a life in exile and legendary projects on the Roma, the 1968 Soviet-led invasion in Prague, and the devastating impact humans have on the landscape. Facsimile pages from the diaries, along with images by the photographer, including self-portraits, lend the volume an immediacy and authenticity. As curator Tomáš Pospech writes, “Koudelka’s diaries are a ‘cookbook’ of classic photography. He associated with the most renowned photographers. His notes sum up his rich experience, including with the now-vanishing technology of analog black-and-white photography. His remarks, quips, and stories reappear, just as he repeatedly made resolutions, affirmed the rules he had adopted, and recalled earlier events and dreams.” Diaries is a perfect companion to Josef Koudelka: Next (2023), the visual biography by Melissa Harris.