Gitans

Text by Will Guy.
This book by Josef Koudelka was first published in 1975. Although the English edition was always called simply Gypsies, the French edition was originally called Gypsies: The End of the Journey. The book was revised and enlarged in 2011, and it is that edition which is currently available.

Through 109 photographs taken between 1962 and 1971, in Czechoslovakia – which has since become Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia – as well as in Rumania, Hungary, France and Spain, Koudelka entered into the gypsies’ world to pay tribute to them. By accentuating the blacks, this master of perspective composes strangely powerful images. Through his portraits of women, men and children, he introduces us to both smiles and suffering, music and silence, life and death. In these desolate settings, the photographer’s gaze meets the other and the elsewhere, producing work of overwhelming humanity.