Come As You Are

6 Sept

Written By Syed

Slovakia, 1963

Slovakia, 1966

Moravia, 1966

Slovakia, 1966

Slovakia, 1967

Romania, 1968

Photography by Josef Koudelka

Gitans: La Fin Du Voyage (1975)

(images via Time)

In 1968 Josef Koudelka returned home from Romania, where he had been photographing Roma peoples, to Moravia (part of the modern day Czech Republic) two days before it was invaded by the Soviet Union. His photographs of the ensuing destruction were smuggled out of the country and published anonymously, for fear of reprisals, in The Sunday Times Magazine. He finally fled to England in 1970, however by 1971 he left with little else but his camera to document life across Europe. He has since returned a number of times to exploring the Roma communities, scattered as they are across Europe and the rest of the world. His photographs of these communities are unapologetic in their approach - there is no problem presented that is to be solved, no conscious political or social message, there is simply life. An intimate moment, an intimate movement, caught in flight. A story to be seen, a story to be told, a story never-ending.

"What I have longed to create, what I have believed in, what I have dedicated my life to is that formless something floating in the mist. That mysterious something can be intuited only through the miraculous sensibilities with which humans have been endowed. It is pre-lingual, it can only be labeled an intangible asset.

Such intangible assets exist for but an instant. They emerge in one moment only to dissipate in the next, they are possible only in the movements of a moment, only in a space that is raw and alive.

It is meaningless to construct something and place it as an ornament. Things must be alive, they must be vibrant and in motion."

Yohji Yamamoto, My Dear Bomb, (Ludion, 2010)