“THE MOST POTENT AND POWERFUL PHOTOGRAPHER ALIVE TODAY”: FIRST EDITION OF KOUDELKA’S AWARD-WINNING PHOTOBOOK, EXILES

KOUDELKA, Josef. Exiles. (London): Thames & Hudson, (1988). Oblong quarto, original brown cloth, original photographic dust jacket. $700.

First edition, London issue, of Koudelka’s striking photobook—“a turning point in Koudelka’s work”—with 61 full-page black-and-white photogravures, original photographic dust jacket.

Writing of Koudelka’s award-winning Exiles, novelist Dominique Eddé noted, “I believe that there are some true artists in photography, and that Koudelka is one of them… Here, it is not only humanity, but reality as a whole that is in exile. Outside of the law, outside of time, as in a dream. A landscape without a country, without an age, where no two ways of seeing are ever the same” (Koudelka, 153). “Exiles is a definite turning point in Koudelka’s work and subjects… [a] very powerful and idiosyncratic vision” (Afterimage). One of the 20th century’s finest photographers, the work of Koudelka is “melodramatic and tragic, serious in the best sense of the word (Parr & Badger I:230). “Koudelka is the most potent and powerful photographer alive today. His black-and-white photographs are so highly charged, so strong in their visual impact, and so haunted that they defy description with the makeshift scenery of words” (British Journal of Photography). Winner of the ICP award for Outstanding Photographic Book; first edition published simultaneously in Paris (as Exils) and New York. With essay by Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz.

A fine copy.