Koudelka
Shooting
Holy Land

  • Israel, Germany
  • en
  • en
  • 72'
Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land
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Synopsis

Josef Koudelka is a fiercely independent artist. Branded an exile, stateless for many years after the end of the Prague Spring, photography is for him a powerful act that shows both humanity and its unsettling strangeness. His images are imbued with bohemian freedom and a dull, inhospitable promise. So when he was asked to go and photograph in Israel, the fear of being politically exploited, the fact of having to accept his designated young guide (to control him? he wondered)... mistrust almost won out. It was overcome by a mixture of rejection of "the wall" and attraction for this symbolic land. He simply insisted on paying for his own plane ticket, so as not to owe anything to anyone. What happened next, between him and his young guide Gilad Baram, is a truly romantic story. A friendship was born between the old photographer and the young filmmaker. Gilad Baram had the intelligence to turn these moments into a magnificent film, adopting the right distance and documenting the work of this demanding photographer.

What you will find in this film

The 120 film format used for panoramic shots • Koudelka's relationship with the landscape • The Israeli separation barrier • The symbolic traces of man • The landscape in black and white • Approaching a place, scouting for an angle

Keywords

Masters of Photography Analogue Photography Reportage & Society Nature & Landscape

Documentaries about photography, and about the people who make it. 
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What you’ll find

Portraits of photographers, names everyone knows and others you’ll discover here. Films about street photography, war, fashion or portraiture, about printing and historical processes. About the trades of photography too. And then suggestions for going further, with Focuses, articles, interviews, bibliographies.

A small independent team

Documentaries about photography were rarely shown on television, and hardly at all on streaming platforms. We created The Darkroom Rumour to give them a place of their own. We are a small team, and we choose every film ourselves, with no school to defend.

Inspire your photography

In these films, you see photographers at work, in the field as well as in the darkroom. If you take pictures, you’ll often come away with an idea to try. If you simply like looking at images, you may start to see them differently.

How it works 

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The authors/artists

Josef Koudelka
Josef Koudelka
Photographer
Gilad Baram
Gilad Baram
Film director

Further exploration

Selected bibliography

• Josef Koudelka, Gypsies, Aperture, 1975. Publisher · Libraries

• Josef Koudelka, Exiles, Aperture, 1988. Publisher · Libraries

• Josef Koudelka, Chaos, Phaidon, 1999. Libraries

• Josef Koudelka, Invasion 68: Prague, Aperture, 2008. Publisher · Libraries

• Josef Koudelka, Wall, Aperture, 2013. Publisher · Libraries

• Josef Koudelka, Nationality Doubtful, Yale University Press, 2014. Libraries

Online

• Josef Koudelka, Naomi Blumberg, Britannica.

• Photographer Josef Koudelka Lets Us Peek at 51 Years of Diary Entries, Chloe Gordon, Print, 2022.

• Josef Koudelka, Magnum Photos.

• Josef Koudelka, une vie sacrifiée à la photographie, Radio Prague International, 2018 (in French).

Instagram

Equipment used

• Tomiyama Art Panorama 170

• Leica M