Josef Koudelka: Ruins

A record of Magnum photographer Josef Koudelka’s grand tour around ancient Mediterranean sites

Between 1991 and 2015, Josef Koudelka completed an epic journey across twenty countries bordering the Mediterranean, stopping at over 200 Greek and Roman archaeological sites, relentlessly researching the beauty of the ancient world.

Before the Magnum photographer, nobody had attempted to make such a comprehensive photographic record of these artefacts 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.

Contents List

Essays by Alain Schnapp, Hélöise Conésa and Bernard Latarjet • The Photographs