SIGNED BY JOSEF KOUDELKA

KOUDELKA, Josef. Gitans. La fin du voyage [Gypsies. The End of the Journey]. (Paris): Delpire, (1975). Oblong quarto, original debossed brown cloth, original photographic dust jacket. $2800.

First edition, scarce French issue of Koudelka’s first photobook, the work that “sealed Koudelka’s reputation” (Parr & Badger), boldly signed by Koudelka on the title page, featuring 60 powerful black-and-white photogravure plates.

"It was through Gitans that Josef Koudelka first became known in the Western world… His work with the gypsies, conducted between 1962 and 1970, played a decisive, although by nature unpredictable role in the formation of Koudelka as a photographer… a human symbiosis provoked by a camera" (Frizot, Koudelka, 65-66). Published simultaneously in France by Delpire and under the title of Gypsies in America (Aperture), Koudelka's Gitans "sealed his reputation as one of the finest photographers still utilizing the humanist documentary mode" (Parr & Badger II:230). "One of the most extraordinary photographers and powerful artists of the 20th century" (Afterimage), Koudelka shares a "darkly romantic view of the world pioneered by Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank" (New York Times). Here is a vision both "melodramatic and tragic, serious in the best sense of the word" (Parr & Badger II:230). In 1975, the same year Koudelka was honored with a one-man exhibit at MoMA, "Robert Delpire published in Paris, Gitans: La fin du voyage" (Koudelka, 268). Text in French; preface by Robert Delpire, afterword by Willy Guy. See Open Book, 304.

Images clean and fresh, minute underlining to one word of text (Afterword); lightest edge-wear to bright photographic dust jacket. An extraordinary signed copy in about-fine condition.