maandag, mei 12, 2008
Interview met Josef Koudelka
In de Sunday Times verscheen gisteren een interview met de Tsjechische fotograaf Josef Koudelka, die beroemd werd met zijn foto's van de Praagse lente in 1968. Inmiddels 71 jaar staat hij nog steeds bekend om zijn sobere nomadische levensstijl.
Koudelka’s passion for photography is compulsive. Even in the midst of the 1968 invasion he was consumed not by fear but by a desire to capture the event on film. “I don’t consider myself a man with a lot of courage. I am a visual person and I just reacted to what I saw – everywhere I looked there was something important to photograph.”
He has purposely avoided becoming tied down and lives as frugally as he can. “I still don’t have a car, a television, a mobile phone, a wife. What I don’t have I don’t need. For me the most important thing is to wake up in the morning, feel well and go and take photographs.”
Everything else has taken a back seat in Koudelka’s life. He has two daughters and a young son, each from a different country: France, England and Italy. He has regular contact with them and claims he hasn’t missed out by not settling for family life. “In Italy someone once called me ‘the dog who escaped from the chain’. What I wanted I had, and still have.”
But his lifestyle did cost him the love of his life. “The woman I loved, with whom I had a child and who I wanted to spend my life with, left me. She said she’d had enough of me leaving all the time, and she was probably completely right."
Lees Josef Koudelka and 1968, summer of hate.
Koudelka’s passion for photography is compulsive. Even in the midst of the 1968 invasion he was consumed not by fear but by a desire to capture the event on film. “I don’t consider myself a man with a lot of courage. I am a visual person and I just reacted to what I saw – everywhere I looked there was something important to photograph.”
He has purposely avoided becoming tied down and lives as frugally as he can. “I still don’t have a car, a television, a mobile phone, a wife. What I don’t have I don’t need. For me the most important thing is to wake up in the morning, feel well and go and take photographs.”
Everything else has taken a back seat in Koudelka’s life. He has two daughters and a young son, each from a different country: France, England and Italy. He has regular contact with them and claims he hasn’t missed out by not settling for family life. “In Italy someone once called me ‘the dog who escaped from the chain’. What I wanted I had, and still have.”
But his lifestyle did cost him the love of his life. “The woman I loved, with whom I had a child and who I wanted to spend my life with, left me. She said she’d had enough of me leaving all the time, and she was probably completely right."
Lees Josef Koudelka and 1968, summer of hate.
# posted by Jan-Edward : 09:50
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