Josef Koudelka - WALL - 2013

Wall presents the panoramic photographs taken between 2008 and 2012 by Josef Koudelka in Jerusalem, Hebron, Ramallah, Bethlehem and in various Israeli settlements along the barrier road that separates Israel from Palestine.

The Israelis call it the “security fence,” the Palestinians the “wall of apartheid,” and groups like Human Rights Watch use the term “the separation barrier”: the “wall” that is the centerpiece of Koudelka’s project metaphorically represents a human rift in the natural landscape.

In Wall, Koudelka’s photographs are accompanied by texts by Ray Dolphin, a researcher and writer who has compiled numerous reports on the Wall for the United Nations. He has lived in the West Bank and Gaza for over twenty years. Dolphin has curated the chronology, captions and glossary found in the volume.

Josef Koudelka was born in Moravia in 1938. He began his career as an aerospace engineer, then devoted himself full-time to photography in the late 1960s. In 1968 he photographed the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, publishing the images with the initials P.P. (Prague photographer). Subsequently, for that reportage, the anonymous photographer was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal of the Overseas Press Club. Forty years later, a wider selection of those photographs was published in Invasion 68: Prague, along with texts selected from direct sources. In 1970 Koudelka left Czechoslovakia, became stateless and was granted political asylum in England. Soon after he joined Magnum Photos. In 1975 the first edition of his book Gypsies was published (a new, revised and expanded edition appeared in 2011). Exiles was published in 1988. Before Wall, Koudelka published ten photography books centered on the relationship between contemporary man and the landscape, including Black Triangle (1994), Chaos (1999) and Lime (2012). Major exhibitions of his work have been hosted by the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography in New York, the Hayward Gallery in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Koudelka has received significant awards such as the Prix Nadar (1978), the Grand Prix National de la Photographie (1989), the Grand Prix Cartier-Bresson (1991), the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography (1992) and the Medal of Merit awarded by the Czech Republic (2002). In 2012 he was named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. He lives between Paris and Prague.

Ray Dolphin is a researcher and writer. He has compiled numerous reports on the Wall for the United Nations and is the author of The West Bank Wall: Unmaking Palestine (Pluto Press, 2006) and Jerusalem: Military Conquest by Architectural Means (Jerusalem Quarterly, 2006). He has lived in the West Bank and Gaza for over twenty years. The statistics used in this book are based on information obtained from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jerusalem Local Office.