He has visited places such as Italy, Libya, Greece, and Syria—to photograph more than two hundred archaeological sites. Stark and mesmerizing panoramic photographs take the viewer to Delphi, Pompeii, Petra, Carthage, and other ancient locations, including sites now greatly altered or destroyed due to recent conflict. ‘Ruins’ is a monument of architectural and cultural history, as well as civilizations long past.

Before the Magnum photographer, nobody had attempted to make such a comprehensive photographic record of these artifacts with so much persistence and so little assistance. Koudelka’s aim was to use art to re-appropriate a world that is escaping us and that we could lose – a world where the mind alternates between reason and faith, law, and liberty.

“Ruins” will be published in conjunction with a major exhibition at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France that will be on show from 15 September – 16 December 2020.
The “Ruins” exhibition includes 110 prints from this series.
The publication is distributed in Europe and Australia by Thames & Hudson and the rest of the world by Aperture. This volume includes enlightening texts by a Greek studies expert, curator, and agricultural engineer that cast another look at antiquity and its ruins.

Josef Koudelka: Ruins
Exhibition:

September 15 – December 13
BnF, Paris

Book release:
September 2020