Josef Koudelka
Born in 1938 in a tiny Moravian village,Josef Koudelkabegan making pictures as a teenager with a 6 x 6 inch Bakelite camera. While working as an aeronautical engineer in Prague and Bratislava in the 1960s, he started to photograph the theater in Prague, then the gypsies of Slovakia and Romania. In 1968, he recorded the invasion of Prague by the Warsaw Pact armies, and his work became internationally known, winning him the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal. Koudelka left Czechoslovakia in 1970, and was awarded asylum in England. He became a member of Magnum in 1974, but has refused most journalistic assignments: in constant movement, he prefers to wander Europe in search of pictures of a world that is rapidly disappearing. He has been the recipient of many major grants and awards, including the Grand Prix Cartier-Bresson in 1991.