Chaos

Josef Koudelka (b.1938) is one of the most critically successful documentary photographers of our time and a key figure in the Magnum group. Chaos features the best of his panoramic photographs, shot over the last 12 years, which wrench a powerful and beautiful visual order out of chaos and dereliction. A momentous collection of both urban and environmental landscapes, devoid of people, Chaos is Koudelka's contemporary statement of vision. It is his first major monograph since the acclaimed Exiles (1988).

Robert Delpire is an editor, art director and curator. From 1982 to 1996 he was Director of the Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, where he curated over 150 exhibitions.

'Only the greatest of photographers, such as Koudelka, can reconcile such diametrically opposed elements as documentary and aesthetic truth into one seamless image so that it is at once highly significant and utterly compelling. Chaos destined to be a classic, succeeds in doing so time and again.' (Art Newspaper)

'A book of complex, and very often beautiful, images ... a wonderful monograph ... Koudelka confirms his standing at the top of any hierarchy of twentieth-century image-makers with this book.' (British Journal of Photography)

'Chaos confirms Josef Koudelka as one of the world's greatest living photographers. This is not just a landmark photographic book but a landmark book per se.' (Scotland on Sunday)