Koudelka: Twelve Panoramas 1987 – 2012
PACE GALLERY
508 West 25th Street, New York
January 16 – February 14, 2015
Pace and Pace/MacGill Gallery will be presenting Josef Koudelka: Twelve Panoramas 1987-2012. An exhibition of carefully selected panoramic pieces by the artist himself, to represent his best work from the past three decades, the 12 large-scale, black-and-white photographs depict the vestiges of industrial areas and coastal landscapes in Europe and the Middle East.
Since 1986, Josef Koudelka has embraced and employed the expansive compositional format of the panorama. From his commissioned investigation of the French-English region impacted by the Channel Tunnel for La Mission Photographique Transmanche project, to his exploration of the political climate in Israel and Palestine, and his most recent documentation of the persistence of classicism along the Mediterranean rim, Koudelka has continuously used panoramic cameras to showcase terrains that have been significantly shaped, altered, and even devastated by the effects of industry, time, and territorial conflict.
Measuring over eight feet in length, a scale which transforms the works into life-size picture windows, Koudelka’s photographs are devoid of human figures, but not of human presence. The scars of mining operations, industrial exploitation, and constructed physical barriers are evident in these sites, intensified by the photographer’s vantage point and use of graphic contrast. Koudelka’s panoramas are not conventional, picturesque vistas; rather, these dramatically desolate yet strikingly beautiful images stand as records of the ruins of modern civilization and archeological documents of mankind’s complex and chaotic relationship with nature and power.
