Customer Reviews

Josef Koudelka (Photofile)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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The Czech photogrpaher, Josef Koudelka is the great chronicler of the last prockets of pre-modern Europe. His work combines ethnography, photojournalism and the sensibilities of a great landscape painter. Unfortunately, many of his photo collections are expensive and difficult to find. The Photofile series were originally published in France with the purpose of serving as a reasonably priced introduction to the great photographers of the Twentieth Century. This volume on Josef Koudelka provides a wide selection of his best works. Both the quality of the paper and printing are first class. This book is a great value. Highly recommended.

I bought this book having purpose to get acquainted with work of Josef Koudelka. The book fits my needs: it has 66 probably most famous Koudelkas photographs.

The photographer is introduced by Berbard Cuau in 4 pages, I found the text is really worse reading to understand something about Koudelka's specific vision.

This book is nice printed and accurate designed. All photographs provided with date and a country name, where they were taken. Shortcoming: I don't completely understand the order in which photograph's are located, neither by the date, nor by the place.

The book is really handy, but it is not a defect for me - it was made to quickly review Koudelka's works and to make people understand if they are interested in this photographer. And in that case they can spend more time and money and buy one of that huge serious albums.

I give this book 4 starts because I was a bit disappointed: there is no "toughtful 12-page essay by Anna Farova that introduces Koudelka's pictures, as well as the 24-page transcription of a conversation between Josef Koudelka and a fellow Czech journalist" as I expected after reading comments at Amazon. There is only 4-page introduction and a short biography and bibliography of the photographer.

As for doing a large presentation and project on him, I did not like that the book had no sense of order when it came to his pictures. I had 4 different books, a few websites and a few collaborated books with koudelka in them and I still could not figure out how the pictures were placed. Although this small book had the most pictures I needed to see! I thought it was completely worth buying, especially for the price.