Iniziò a viaggiare e nel 1968 era appena tornato da un servizio sugli zingari della Romania, quando una telefonata lo sveglia e lo fa arrivare in piazza mentre le forze militari del Patto di Varsavia entravano a Praga per soffocare il riformismo ceco.
I negativi di quelle preziose fotografie riescono ad uscire dal paese tramite canali clandestini ed arrivare alla Magnum Photos e poi pubblicate sul Sunday times. Koudelka rimarrà anonimo e le sue foto vengono firmate P.P. (Prague Photographer) per salvare se stesso e la sua famiglia da rappresaglie.
Nonostante ciò, le immagini diventano dei simboli intenrnazionali e premiati con il Robert Capa Gold medal per fotografie scattate con eccezionale coraggio.
Attarerso l'agezia Magnum riesce ad arrivare in Europa e a chiedere asilo politico in Inghilterra. Così negli anni settanta e ottanta, rispondendo al suo carattere nomade si agira per l'Europa, lavorando grazie a premi e riconoscimenti, pubblicando diversi libri di cui il primo dedicato agli zingari (Gypsies) e il secondo al suo esilio (Exiles).
Tre figli, ognuno di loro è nato in un paese diverso, a testimonianza della vita del padre.
Josef Koudelka, a czech photographer, is part of the photography's history. Everything began shooting his family with an old bakelite camera 6x6; in 1961 he took his degree in the Tecnic university of Prague, but in 1967 he already has decided to abandon his career as an engineer for a something more truly nomadic as could be a phographer.
He spent time travelling and in 1968 coming back from a photo session in Romanie about gipsies, he received a telephone call where he has been informed of the revolution.
He was there, in August 1968. He witnessed and recorded the military forces of the Warsaw Pact as they invaded Prague and crushed the Czech reforms. Koudelka's negatives were smuggled out of Prague into the hands of the Magnum agency, and published anonymously in The Sunday Times Magazine under the initials P. P. (Prague Photographer) for fear of reprisal to him and his family.
Despite of this, His pictures of the events became dramatic international symbols. In 1969 the "anonymous Czech photographer" was awarded the Overseas Press Club's Robert Capa Gold Medal for photographs requiring exceptional courage.
With Magnum to recommend him to the British authorities, he applied for a three-month working visa and fled to England in 1970, where he applied for political asylum, in 1971 joined Magnum Photos and stayed for more than a decade. A nomad at heart, he continued to wander around Europe with his camera and little else. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Koudelka sustained his work through numerous grants and awards, and continued to exhibit and publish major projects like Gypsies (1975, his first book) and Exiles (1988, his second). Since 1986, he has worked with a panoramic camera and issued a compilation of these photographs in his book Chaos in 1999.
He now resides in France and Prague and is continuing his work documenting the European landscape. He has two daughters and a young son, each from a different country: France, England and Italy, they can testify their father nature.
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