The Black Triangle, 20
Koudelka at the launch of his Invasion ’68 in Bucharest, Fall 2013
‘Man is not an omniscient master of the planet who can get away with doing whatever he likes and whatever may suit him at the moment’. That introductory quotation of Václav Havel is illustrated by Josef Koudelka’s photographs of the land dominated by head frames, waste heaps, factory stacks and dried-up lakes.
20 years ago Koudelka published “The Black Triangle”, a photographic report in black and white on the Podkrusnohorí Region – the western tip of the infamous Black Triangle’s foothills of the Ore Mountains, located between Germany and the Czech Republic. It is one of Europe’s worst devastated territories, but it is also a region that shaped the origin and future development of the Czech state.
The Czech photographer is author of two masterpieces Invasion 1968 – depicting the Soviet brutal assault on the Prague Spring and Gypsies – instants and portraits of Roma in 60s Czechoslovakia and Romania.
Slate Magazine provides a sneak preview of the Black Triangle in an macabre yet beautiful slideshow.
1960s. Demolition of the old town of Most at the foothills of the Ore Mountains – the utter creation of the Czech wastelands to be immortalized by Koudelka in early 90s.
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