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Thumbnail-size images of copyrighted artworks are displayed under fair use, in accordance with guidelines recommended by the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, published by the College Art Association in February 2015.

Czechoslovakia, 1967 (Angel on Bicycle)

Josef Koudelka (Czechoslovakian, born in 1938)
1967

Medium/Technique Photograph, gelatin silver print
Dimensions Image: 22.9 x 35.6 cm (9 x 14 in.)
Sheet: 30.2 x 40.6 cm (11 7/8 x 16 in.)
Credit Line Polaroid Foundation Purchase Fund
Accession Number1982.160
NOT ON VIEW
ClassificationsPhotographs
During the early 1960s, Josef Koudelka began an extended documentary project focusing on the lives of gypsies, at first in his native Czechoslovakia and later in Romania, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. His grainy, unsentimental black-and-white images typically portray his subjects in the context of their families and their religious faith. Koudelka sympathized with the disenfranchised state of these "outsiders" and often photographed them arrayed within shallow, stagelike spaces, as in this enigmatic image. The odd juxtaposition of an old woman, a horse-drawn cart, and a beautiful youth (presumably costumed for a church pageant) is characteristic of Koudelka's pictures, which ask more questions than they answer.


InscriptionsSheet all signed in ink, lower right margin: "Josef Koudelka".
ProvenanceThe Atelier Group, LTD., New York; purchased February 1982.
Copyright© 2010 Josef Koudelka