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Chaos (Hardcover)

by Robert Delpire (Foreword), Josef Koudelka (Author, Photographer), Bernard Noel (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Product details

Hardcover: 112 pages
Publisher: Phaidon Press Ltd (Nov 1999)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0714839000
ISBN-13: 978-0714839004
Product Dimensions: 43.4 x 30.2 x 1.5 cm

Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 45,327 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
Popular in these categories:
#36 in Books > Art, Architecture & Photography > Painting & Drawing > Techniques & Tools > Painting & Drawing Landscapes
#99 in Books > Art, Architecture & Photography > Photography > Photographers

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Product Description

For the past 12 years, Koudelka has made photographs using a panoramic format camera, exploring its formal possibilities with rigour and originality, and "Chaos" is the fulfilment of Koudelka's panoramic vision. "Paradoxically, the images in "Chaos" viciously expose the anarchy which man imposes on nature and on himself" writes Robert Delpire in his foreword, "beyond all controversy, they denounce the absurdity of a world turned into a scene of dereliction. Josef Koudelka recreates a dream space, an elsewhere beyond time, beyond location, within which he organizes the shapeless and the chaotic". "Chaos" is dramatic, provocative and beautiful. Koudelka's next publishing landmark, it will have a powerful impact within the art and photography world.

About the Author

Josef Koudelka was born in Moravia, Czechoslovakia in 1938. He sprang to fame for his photographs of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, finding asylum in Wales in 1970. Moving later to a small room in the attic of Magnum's Paris office, and becoming a member of Magnum, he has declined all the opportunities for commercial success to live as a nomadic traveller. He wandered with the gypsies throughout East Europe for years to produce Gypsies in 1975, (regarded by many as one of the greatest photography books of the last 50 years). This was followed up with another important work, Exiles, in 1986 establishing firmly his reputation as "the most potent and powerful photographer alive today" (The Times, London). Cornell Capa, founder of the International Center of Photography, sums up the career and approach of Koudelka: "His unsentimental, stark, brooding imagery reflects his spirit, the very essence of an exile who is at home wherever his wandering body finds haven in the night..." Koudelka's many one man shows include exhibitions at MOMA New York and the Hayward Gallery, London.

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Customer Reviews

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5.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique, compositionally stunning, atmospheric., 25 Jan 2001

By A Customer

I get lost in this book for hours; were I only allowed ten books, this would be one of them. I agree with the many critics who say that it will become a classic.

Large panoramic black and white photographs of peopleless landscapes and city streets. Some of the images verge on abstract, although in Josef Koudelka's own unique way and certainly not in the classic abstract style. One of the main strengths of this book is composition, but without any sense of contrived cleverness.

The subject matter itself in many images is awesome; in others, the use of the subject matter is awesome - or both. It's strange to think that that there are still jaw dropping sights that are largely unknown.

A big book, beautifully printed with rich deep blacks and paper whites. Paper quality is excellent.

If the publisher reads this, I would love a mini version to complement the full version. My thanks to Josef Koudelka.

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chaos, 5 Jan 2004

By	londonreader21 - See all my reviews

Czech born Josef Koudelka trained as an aeronautical engineer at the Technical University in Prague. He began making photographs in 1956 and came to fame, albeit anonymously, when he photographed the Russian invasion of his homeland ten years later. Two years after the invasion he came to the West but this was only the beginning of his journey. It is seemingly never ending and, although a man of few words, he is perhaps best described as a witness to our times. This is not to say that his watching is either arbitrary or passive: there is a searching and a need to know in his work. His first book, Gypsies, was published in 1975 and is one of the classic photographic monographs of the century. In 1988, by which time he had “settled” in France, he published Exiles which was as well received as his first opus. Chaos, beautifully produced by Phaidon Press, is Koudelka’s first major publication for more than ten years.

Chaos is made with a panoramic camera, a tool Koudelka first used when photographing in Northern France for the arts project associated with the construction of the Channel Tunnel. As well as differing in format from his past publications it also differs in subject matter, for here Koudelka addresses himself to a memory of humanity rather than humanity itself. In his previous books Koudelka’s vision, although a harsh one, is tinged with compassion and respect: empathy softens the contrasty prints. Chaos however seems to address a grander vision. The first image, resembling nothing more than an icon struck down in the maelstrom of the changing Eastern Block, turns out to have been made in California in 1991. This is not a book about the chaos left in the wake of any single political system. Equally it is far from solely contemporary or even restricted to this century. Along with Auschwitz, Berlin and Bosnia, Koudelka’s journey has also paused to consider the foundations of civilisation at Delphi and Athens. Images are also made from the air and perspectival conventions cast aside with deliberation. It seems as if Koudelka has reached a point in his quest where he needs to peel back the very landscape itself. In the stark, naked, beauty of these landscapes Koudelka may, at the turn of the millennium, in actuality be offering his viewer a memory from a future yet to come.

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Book you can't take your eyes off, 26 Jan 2000

By A Customer

This is something I did not expect to see, an outstanding and very "Magnum" view on the world mainly Eastern Europe. Josef Koudelka was a photographer not known to me before but after seeing his book and the exbition, he has got a lot to show. Definetly the book to have!!!

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