People living in the margins of society

Josef Koudelka, 88, one of the world’s greatest and most revered photographers of the post-war period, who photographer lives on the edge of European society.  He came to prominence  through his powerful pictures smuggled out of his native Prague after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion, first published in western newspapers anonymously under the attribution P.P. ( “Prague Photographer”). Distilled from sixty-nine journal kept over the course of fifty-plus years, Hosef Koudelka: Diaries offers a peep inside the mind and artistic process of the iconoclastic Czech photographer renowned for a life in exile and legendary projects on the Roma, and the devastating impact humans … Continue reading People living in the margins of society

Astonishingly heroic woman

On September 5 1951 Elzbieta Zawacka arrived home from her teaching job to find two officials waiting for her, Ransacking her tiny flat in Torun, northern Poland , they pounced upon a cotton-reel containing a $10 note, money she had given to her late mother who had never spent it. Owing foreign currency in communist Poland carried a 10-year prison sentence with torture.  She had already fought to defend Lvov , then a city in eastern Poland now in Ukraine and known as Lviv, from the Nazis and joined the Home Army – one of the largest resistance movement in … Continue reading Astonishingly heroic woman