Medium: Gelatin silver print
Provenance Note: publicity or archival photograph related to the 1975 MoMA exhibitiont
In 1975, Josef Koudelka held his first solo exhibition in the United States at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, under the title "Josef Koudelka." Curated by John Szarkowski, then Director of the Department of Photography at MoMA, the exhibition brought together 43 photographs made over the previous decade, including important works from the Gypsies series. The exhibition not only established Koudelka's early reputation in the American photographic world, but also marked a significant moment in the entry of his work, shaped in East European and broader European contexts, into the discourse of modern photography in the United States. The verso of the present work bears an exhibition label identifying it as "Spain, 1971" and noting that the exhibited print was "Lent by the Photographer"; it also carries a "Public Information" stamp.
Josef Koudelka (b. 1938) is a major Czech-born, later naturalized French photographer. After photographing the Prague Spring in 1968, he left Czechoslovakia for political asylum in 1970 and soon joined Magnum Photos. Living and traveling in a condition of near-exile for many years, he went on to produce the landmark bodies of work Gypsies and Exiles, securing his place as one of the defining photographers of the postwar era.