Title: Modern Sublime: The World of Josef Koudelka at the Rencontres d'Arles
Abstract: would like to see everything, to look at everything. (1) These are Josef Koudelka's words quoted by Robert Delpire, his friend, editor and curator. photographs, you know them. You have published them, you have exhibited them, then you can tell whether they mean something or not. (2) The fact is Robert Delpire is far from being a novice in the world of photography. Unbeknownst to many, he was the first publisher of Robert Frank's The Americans in 1958, a year before Grove Press in the U.S., and the first director of the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris. try to be a photographer. I cannot talk. I am not interested in talking. If I have anything to say, it may be found in my images. I am not interested in talking about things, explaining about the whys and the hows. I do not mind showing my images, but not so much my contact sheets. I mainly work from small test prints. I often look at them, sometimes for a long time. I pin them to the wall, I compare them to make up my mind, be sure of my choices. I let others tell me what they mean. [To Robert Delpire] My photographs, you know them. You have published them, you have exhibited them, then you can tell whether they mean something or not. (3) An event eclipsed all others last summer at the 33rd Annual International Photography festival in Arles, France: the Josef Koudelka retrospective curated by Robert Delpire. (4) Les Rencontres d'Arles, as this festival is now officially called, needed a gros coup, a change of direction. Sponsorship and attendance had been dropping for the past seven years despite various attempts to revive one of the oldest photography festivals. A president, Francois Barre (director of Beaubourg museum in Paris from 1993 to 1996) and a board (including Jean Baudrillard, Robert Delpire, Alain Fleischer, Jean-Luc Monterosso (5) had been chosen at the end of 2001 Rencontres. They appointed a new director for the next five years, Francois Hebel. He had been a previous director of the Rencontres in 1986 and 1987, the director of the Paris bureau of Magnum from 1988 to 2000, the assistant-director of Corbis Europe in 2000 and 2001. He left Corbis in the middle of turmoil, surrounded by frustrated photographers, to join th e team of the Rencontres. With old blood, energies, the festival in the summer of 2002 heavily relied on Magnum (6) for its appeal and presented 30 exhibitions in 18 locations, most of them situated within walking distance in the antique Mediterranean city. It also offered two international conferences, 19 workshops, and eight night projections at the antique Roman theater. At the chore of the 2002 programming was a comprehensive survey of Josef Koudelka's lifework. In order to cover the scope of his phenomenal oeuvre and draw audiences back to Arles, Hebel with the help of Delpire opened four different spaces to the retrospective, a first in Arles. Hundreds of Koudelka's black and white images of various formats and sizes created during a career that spans over 40 years were on display for thousands of eyes. The retrospective was organized followed the course of the photographer's life. An evening projection was also dedicated to Koudelka's work but failed to meet the audience's expectations. What co uld have been an opportunity for the artist to explain his vision and projects and expand on them, one of the delights of such evenings in Arles as illustrated later that week by Larry Sultan, was only a reiteration of the exhibitions. Koudelka, in accordance with his own words (see above), remained almost silent during the duration of the event compelling the audience to go and buy the latest-published book on him that was being sold in the local bookstores (7). Born in 1938 in Czechoslovakla and trained as an engineer, Josef Koudelka turned to photography very early on. His first professional work began with photographs taken for theater companies and magazines in Prague. The first exhibition space of the Rencontres was mainly dedicated to these images. …
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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