Description
Paris: Delpire Editeur, 1975. Oblonged large heavy 4to in original hardcover with dustjacket. Unpaginated with 60 black and white photographs
Somewhat worn dustjacket, with repairs to edges, mainly backcover. Four leaves with traces of a paper clip to margins – please see attached photos for condition. The jacket is now protected in acid-free see-through mylar jacket. Not a perfect copy of this very rare edition but overall good and acceptable and priced accordingly
First edition, 1st Printing. Koudelka’s first photobook, the work that sealed Koudelka’s reputation. This is the French edition of the book published simultaneously by Aperture as “Gypsies”. With a foreword by Robert Delpire. The book consist of photographs of Roma society taken between 1962 and 1971 in then-Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, France, and Spain. The volume’s design is based on a maquette originally prepared in 1968 by Koudelka and graphic designer Milan Kopriva. Koudelka intended to publish the work in Prague, but was forced to flee Czechoslovakia, landing eventually in Paris. In 1975, Robert Delpire, Aperture, and Koudelka collaborated to publish Gitans, la fin du voyage (Gypsies, in the English-language edition), a selection of sixty photographs, half never before published, taken in various Roma settlements around East Slovakia
