Invasion Prague 68

Forty years after the Prague Spring, almost 250 of Joseph Koudelka's searing photographs – most of them published here for the first time – have been selected by the photographer from his own archive. In 1968, Koudelka was thirty years old and although he had spent six years photographing gypsies and theatre, he had never covered a news event. Ending the Prague Spring, on the night of 21 August the city was invaded by Warsaw Pact tanks. Koudelka had returned just the day before from Romania, where he had been following gypsies. He took a series of photographs of the events in Prague and managed to have them smuggled out of the country. They reached New York and a year later the reportage was distributed by Magnum Photos. To avoid reprisals, the images were credited to an unknown Czech photographer – which did not stop Koudelka from winning the Robert Capa Award anonymously. It was sixteen years before the photographer could publicly acknowledge authorship.