JOSEF KOUDELKA: RUINS

A record of Magnum photographer Josef Koudelka’s grand touraround ancient Mediterranean sites

Between 1991 and 2015, Josef Koudelka completed an epic journey across twentycountries bordering the Mediterranean, stopping at over 200 Greek and Romanarchaeological sites, relentlessly researching the beauty of the ancient world.

Before the Magnum photographer, nobody had attempted to make such acomprehensive photographic record of these artefacts with so much persistenceand so little assistance. Koudelka’s aim was to use art to re-appropriate a worldthat is escaping us and that we could lose – a world where the mind alternatesbetween reason and faith, law and liberty.