Aperture Releases New Edition of Josef Koudelka’s “Gypsies”

Gypsies is based on the original maquette for Josef Koudelka’s book Cikani (Czech for Gypsies), prepared by Koudelka and graphic designer Milan Kopriva in 1968, and intended for publication in Prague in 1970.

In 1975, Aperture and Josef Koudelka collaborated with French publisher Robert Delpire to publish Gitans, la fin du voyage (Gypsies in the English-language edition), a tightly edited sequence of sixty black-and-white photographs made between 1962–71 in various Roma settlements.

In 2011, Aperture released a new extended version of Gypsies. This revised and enlarged edition included 109 images from Koudelka’s series Cik´ni, lavishly printed in a unique quadratone mix by Gerhard Steidl.

This fall Aperture once again revisits this series in a new mini paperback edition, making the foundational body of work newly accessible to the larger public.
Now available in an affordable compact edition, the book has been revised and resequenced. Comprising 109 photographs taken between 1962 and 1971 in what was Czechoslovakia (Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia), Romania, Hungary, France, and Spain, it is a unique record of a vanished world.

Roma scholar and sociologist Will Guy, who wrote for both the 1975 and 2011 editions, updates his analysis of the condition of the Roma today, including the most recent upheavals in France and Europe. Stuart Alexander, photo historian and newly appointed editor in chief of Delpire Éditeur, contributes brief historiography of the evolution of this body of work in book form.

About the authors

Josef Koudelka (born in Moravia, Czech Republic, 1938) has received the Prix Nadar, Grand Prix National de la Photographie, HCB Award, and Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography, New York; Hayward Gallery, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Palais de Tokyo, Paris. A member of Magnum Photos, he is based in Paris and Prague.

Stuart Alexander is editor in chief at Delpire Éditeur, Paris. He has organized numerous exhibitions and published extensively on the history of photography.

Will Guy has published widely on issues regarding Roma and is currently a research fellow in sociology at the University of Bristol, UK.