Floating Czech

The photographer Josef Koudelka is as nomadic and unpredictable as the Gypsies whose existence he has brilliantly chronicled. This month, New York's International Center of Photography will open a 160-print exhibition covering the entire career of this vagabond Czech who takes his pictures during spring, summer, and fall, and then spends winter in seclusion determining where he has been and what he has seen. Although long famous in his own right, Koudelka is reminiscent of August Sander and Cartier-Bresson, as well as, curiously, Diane Arbus (this despite his European formality). His images of Gypsies and disturbing photos of the political turmoil in Prague in 1968 are perhaps his best known, but this exhibition will include much that has rarely been seen: pictures taken since he left Czechoslovakia almost two decades ago, the pictorial diary of this remarkable exile, a soul in touch.

RICHARD MERKIN