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| Josef Koudelka, Ireland, 1976 |
The exhibition of a series of Josef Koudelka’s photographs
at the Centre Pompidou focuses very intently on what it means to be in exile.
How to define an exile? It’s a question I have thought about for over 30 years.
I was raised in a middle class suburban oasis where the closest thing to
political upheaval was the queen’s dismissal of the Prime Minster, and where
war was practiced on the parade ground by the university regiment. I left an
apparent paradise by choice. I have always thought of myself as an exile,
geographically removed from any place I could call home. But others would say
that’s ridiculous, exiles have no choice. But even if we are not fleeing war or
dictatorship, famine or poverty, sometimes what looks like a choice, is a
necessity. La fabrique d’exils
confirms my self-understanding as exile.
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| Josef Koudelka, France, 1980 |
The Czechoslovakian, Koudelka wandered around Europe in the
1970s and found a world in exile, not just people displaced. The photographs
themselves exquisitely portray not belonging through light and shadow, mainly throught
the overwhelming coldness of shadow, the sparsity of the background, the
solitude of the human figures. As he travelled, Koudelka found poverty even
where there was none in Europe: in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, France. In images
of shadows on the Paris cobblestones that another photograph would make
romantic, the cropping of the image at the legs of the human figures empties
out the humanity and leaves everyone alone with his shadow as he walks in
different directions.
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| Josef Koudelka, France 1987 |
There is also a silence and a stillness to a continent
better known for its congestion, intensity and noise. In the many shots filled
with snow, the stark whiteness made by the weather also expresses a passing of
time, in a familiar world seen from a different perspective. The snow
photographed, is example of how even the weather makes for a Europe in exile: Koudelka
represents the sumptuousness of light and shadow on stark white snow made
visible literally in the grain of the image, thus giving texture to exile. Shadow
in some images becomes the substance, and not just at the end of day. An image
of hard shadows in Italy next to a worn piece of fabric in closeup makes shadows
violent, the torn fabric striated by its own tears.
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| Josef Koudelka, Gypsies, 1975 |
For someone photographing exile and nomadism, there’s an
ironic focus on place. Every photograph is given a title and every title
consists of the country where it is taken. This complicates their curiosity
because we don’t recognize, Spain, Romania, Yugoslavia, Italy or England in any
of the images. The Europe Koudelka discovered is poor, empty, fragile and
filled with sadness. And because this is what he is looking for, the images
could be taken anywhere, and yet, he insists on naming their location. I know
this: home becomes even more important when there is no home, when home is a
place we cannot go.
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| Josef Koudelka, Autoporträt, 1986 |
And in an addendum to his photographs of the exiles, there
are a series of previously unpublished images of Koudelka himself. When he was
sleeping rough with the gypsies, on friends’ floors, park benches and under a
solitary tree, Koudelka found home wherever he went. Home was where he lay for
the night in his sleeping bag. And this I have found to be true as well: as
exiles, we make home wherever we are, but also, find it inside of us, away from
any physical place that might give us meaning. These photographs
and the Europe they represent capture a concept of exile that is defined by the metaphysical place-less-ness experienced
by those who leave, irrespective of the reason why.
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