thank you very much and they I hope
everybody managed to grab some LSD in
the toilet I’m sure that you need it
after this day so thank you very much
and thank you for having me here this
evening it’s a great pleasure so my name
is Gareth Balaam and I’m an image maker
and tonight I would like to share with
you a story about a film that was never
meant to become and the encounter that
gave birth to it and as the infamous
Ted sentence says changed my life so it
was about ten years ago that I was a
student of photography starting my
second year at the Art Academy in
Jerusalem and that’s where I first met
Yosef Koudelka he was my first
photographic hero and I met him on the
classroom on the wall while he was
projected there I remember the day very
well my professor entered the class
dimmed the light the projector went on
and there was this kind of silence in
the classroom and then these photographs
these back and white photographs very
contrasting photographs started
appearing on the wall these were amazing
photographs of men and women that went
out to the streets of Prague in the
summer of 1968 and grabbed whatever they
could into their hands and stood in
front of those Soviet soldiers that were
on those tanks and were you know
protesting I was so amazed by those
photographs they were so poignant and so
dramatic and so full of anger and I
remember very well especially the last
photograph of that series the last
service which was this one it was a
wristwatch indicating the time forever
frozen in which the Soviet tanks were
supposed to about to enroll into the
capital city so with that photo in mind
as the projection and
I grabbed all my things and I ran to the
library and I started pulling out all
the books that I could of yours of
koudelka so the first book that came
came out of the shelf was a book called
gypsies this was a book that depict in
amazing masterful eye photographs the
lives of Roma communities in East Europe
in the 60s and in the 70s I remember
being sucked into that kind of
photographic world that Koudelka created
for himself there and then I went on to
another book that book was called exiles
and it depicted an exile way of being as
Koudelka had to leave in 1970
Czechoslovakia and went into exile in
West Europe and produced a very person
on a very emotional body of work that
then came out in this book and last were
these books called chaos and black
triangle line these books that they
depicted landscapes that were kind of
manipulated and harmed by by human
beings so sitting back there in the
library I couldn’t imagine what would
happen to me one year later so Yossef
arrived in Israel and Palestine in 2008
he arrived as part of a group of 12
photographers among them were names like
jeff wall Stephen Shore Thomas lute
Rosalyn Fox Solomon and this project was
initiated by a photographer named
Frederick Branagh a French photographer
he had this ambitious idea of bringing
this group of photographers to Israel
and allowing them to be there for an
extensive amount of time giving them all
the infrastructure possible in order to
each create an individual project that
would then become a group exhibition and
a group of monographs and will travel
the world at the very beginning Koudelka
stood up in front of Brennan and
announced that the project that he is
going to make is going to be about
Israeli and Palestinian landscape with a
special
on the wall built by Israel in the West
Bank now Koudelka right first time to
Israel at 2008 it was a kind of tour
that when I was organizing and he came
there and was taken around and only the
last two days he was taken to East
Jerusalem there he saw the wall the wall
at that point you should understand is
an incredible monument it’s a nine meter
high wall concrete it stretches through
a very vast space and when seeing that
wall it’s like a very deep chord in
Koudelka goloka as a child grew up in
czechoslovakia and the german occupation
and then later on as a young man and the
soviet occupation and of course behind
the barrier behind the iron curtain so
he knew very well what walls were about
and how they affect people’s lives so
that’s basically how we met for the
second time but this time face to face
yes so how did that happen well the
project was doing a cooperation with the
Art Academy with my school this was on
the basis of students becoming
assistance to these photographers that
would arrive to Israel while they were
doing their projects in the region and
well this was part of the project
infrastructure and it so happened that
Koudelka was the first photographer to
arrive and I was the first student to be
picked out of a group of students so we
were basically thrown into a car and
drove off to an adventure that none
neither of us really knew how it’s going
to end so only two days after we started
this journey together it took only two
days for me to realize a very very harsh
truth but the last thing that you’re the
critical need is an assistant so he
needed the driver he needed somebody to
translate for him he needed somebody
perhaps to buy the sandwiches and have
it under a tree somewhere but definitely
not an assistant he’s kind of this lone
wolf that works alone completely so
after a few days I was there becoming
more and more frost
it kind of dawned on me that unless I
find something for myself to do by
myself
I will not really manage to last very
long in this project and when attempting
you know I did something that probably
most photography students did as I
thought to myself I must do something I
bought my camera with me when I first
attempted to take the camera out and
start photographing myself
Koudelka you know try to imagine this we
were in this village in the north of the
West Bank we would usually how it went
we would drive we would stop the car to
durka would jump out take his camera
disappear for two hours can come back
and this time
Koudelka jumped out of the car but I had
my camera with me jumped out after him
and started photographing now when he
saw me doing that he turned to me and he
said in a very harsh voice no no way
you’re not gonna hang around me with a
camera leave it in the car you can
imagine I was rather shocked but I was
of course his assistant and an assistant
does what a master tells him to do so I
left the camera in the car but as he was
disappearing I was kind of thinking to
myself imagining this conversation in my
mind in which I would turn to quit dark
at the end of the day and I will tell a
mystic with he’ll come it’s been a great
honor being with you but I will not
continue I’m very lucky to have had
another voice in my mind that voice was
a bit more kind of quiet and said maybe
that’s a bit too presumptuous it kind of
told me perhaps you should try another
way so as the others came back we went
into the car went on to the next
location and the ritual went again he
would step out of the car but I had that
moment in which I had to make a decision
and that decision was to take the camera
again and that’s what I did so Koudelka
is out there and I’m taking my camera
and he’s looking at me and I’m looking
at him and there’s complete silence
between us and then surprisingly he just
walks away and doesn’t say anything
so yeah I’ve never seen anybody
photographing like this
I was completely mesmerised I could
never imagine that that Joseph Koudelka
that I took all the books out in the
library and looked at these photographs
that this is how he photographs you know
back then what I had in my hands was a
camera it was a 5d mark ii and it was it
had a very special feature that feature
was a very high definition video file
today of course every camera has it but
back then in 2009 this was completely
new and that kind of movement that kind
of dance is what I found the most
fascinating
I couldn’t get my eyes of Koudelka and
suddenly holding that camera making
photographs it made a lot of sense to
switch that little dial to the video
mode as that kind of correspondent so
well with that incredible movement and
that’s what I did I switched from the
stills mode to the video mode and
basically started making these short
clips that with time would become longer
and longer and longer so it’s very
important to mention at this point
Koudelka came to Israel throughout four
years from 2009 to 2012 2008 he had this
small excursion but 2009 he actually
started this project and as my great
advantage while you know we would work
these times we would work in these for
years we had could have became four
seven visits in each of these visits he
would come for about three to four weeks
and in each of these weeks we would work
from morning till night
good luck always said you know a
photographer must work as long as
there’s light so that’s about what we
did but my big advantage and I big
advantage were these times in which
Koudelka was not there we had something
in average light five to six months in
which Koudelka was away and I could go
and kind of visit my material
have a look at it and kind of learn what
disasters I was making you know at first
I had a handheld camera I was running
around him I was trying to get him from
many different angles it was a complete
chaos but when I could sit and watch
that and as his project was going
throughout this long period of time I
could also learn and improve myself from
time to time now what I realized is that
if I am to try and depict Koudelka and
the way that he’s working which is what
interests me the most that creative
process of a photographer then I must
start learning from him in order to
learn of him
so I started slowing down I started
trying to imitate the way that he moves
to study it very closely and you know
that master assistant way of imitating
in order to learn I also started putting
my camera on a tripod I did that not
because the other koudelka did it but
because I realized it’s the language of
still photography that I must apply on
my moving image in order to try and
document and depict a photographer
photographing so gradually I started to
understand this and one of my biggest
assets not only the fact that you’re
suppose away one of our biggest assets
was also the fact that
Koudelka didn’t give a damn about what I
was doing
yosef basically needed me around he
needed me for the reasons I mentioned
before but he didn’t care what I was
doing and how I was doing it so I had
that complete freedom to be there with
my camera observe him and and kind of
catch a Koudelka that nobody has really
caught before very genuine
Koudelka very careless and very kind of
natural one in his habitat which is
making photographs so I’ll share with
all people can do something like that
beautiful ask
freeze on the both sides they can defend
or try to that’s the date over what
challenges either but once get can
definite and that destroying it is the
most holy landscape for civilization
so cool Erica is not an easy protagonist
I can tell you that it doesn’t it’s not
a protagonist that gives himself away
very easily what I learned later on as
we were having our journey together is
that at the very beginning Koudelka
actually thought I’m a Mossad agent and
that I’m there to keep an eye on him in
order to prevent him from doing
something he’s not supposed to do or
seeing something he’s not supposed to
see I learned also that that kind of
mentality is something that is very
typical for people that grew up in the
East Bloc and behind the Iron Curtain so
Trust was not an easy thing to get with
your zip code elcome but I think that
point in which things started changing
is when koudelka realized that I as much
as him but even more
I’m extremely affected from what we are
seeing from the places we were visiting
from the people that we met and that
this wall has affected their lives I
kind of learned to and came to the
realization what my society was doing
what my my government was doing and what
it does to others so step by step from
that point on things started to change
and our our trust started to be built
between us a kind of bridge you know so
if it started with him asking me to
leave the camera in the car it ended
with him asking me from which side of
the frame to enter so after four years I
had 130 hours of material and with the
help of the wonderful editorial is a
poor first a film started to emerge out
of this material without a shooting
holyland a film that was never meant to
be come was released in 2015 and have
since traveled to over 50 countries has
been broadcast in many TV stations and
won prizes I never thought I would ever
become a filmmaker but just four weeks
ago I premiered my sorry four months ago
I premiered my second film at the
Berlin Film Festival a film that was
made together with artist Adam Caplan
and I’m now moving on towards my third
film so the meeting with koudelka did
not only produce a film and not only
change my life so profoundly when I met
that hero that I always imagined myself
becoming but it also ended with a
wonderful relationship and a
relationship I never imagined that could
happen and with the with me realizing
and slowly understanding how to shape my
own point of view
so once Koudelka surprised me by telling
me something that I never thought I
would ever hear from him of course it
was said ironically but he said you know
I I need to be very thankful for those
Soviet soldiers who occupied my country
I need to be very thankful because
without that my life would be completely
different but of course it wasn’t the
Warsaw Pact that he needed to thank it
was his own self his own 30 year old
self that in the middle of the night
took his camera went out to the streets
of Prague confronted those tanks and
those soldiers and made a body of work
that impacted not only his life but also
the lives of many others so this is
probably the most important lesson that
I take with me from that adventure with
yours of koudelka it is the lesson of
how never to give up
how never to listen to that voice in you
that tells you you should stop
you should always choose to do always
choose to see and as Koudelka told me he
said I reacted just imagine if I wouldn’t thank you very much
everybody managed to grab some LSD in
the toilet I’m sure that you need it
after this day so thank you very much
and thank you for having me here this
evening it’s a great pleasure so my name
is Gareth Balaam and I’m an image maker
and tonight I would like to share with
you a story about a film that was never
meant to become and the encounter that
gave birth to it and as the infamous
Ted sentence says changed my life so it
was about ten years ago that I was a
student of photography starting my
second year at the Art Academy in
Jerusalem and that’s where I first met
Yosef Koudelka he was my first
photographic hero and I met him on the
classroom on the wall while he was
projected there I remember the day very
well my professor entered the class
dimmed the light the projector went on
and there was this kind of silence in
the classroom and then these photographs
these back and white photographs very
contrasting photographs started
appearing on the wall these were amazing
photographs of men and women that went
out to the streets of Prague in the
summer of 1968 and grabbed whatever they
could into their hands and stood in
front of those Soviet soldiers that were
on those tanks and were you know
protesting I was so amazed by those
photographs they were so poignant and so
dramatic and so full of anger and I
remember very well especially the last
photograph of that series the last
service which was this one it was a
wristwatch indicating the time forever
frozen in which the Soviet tanks were
supposed to about to enroll into the
capital city so with that photo in mind
as the projection and
I grabbed all my things and I ran to the
library and I started pulling out all
the books that I could of yours of
koudelka so the first book that came
came out of the shelf was a book called
gypsies this was a book that depict in
amazing masterful eye photographs the
lives of Roma communities in East Europe
in the 60s and in the 70s I remember
being sucked into that kind of
photographic world that Koudelka created
for himself there and then I went on to
another book that book was called exiles
and it depicted an exile way of being as
Koudelka had to leave in 1970
Czechoslovakia and went into exile in
West Europe and produced a very person
on a very emotional body of work that
then came out in this book and last were
these books called chaos and black
triangle line these books that they
depicted landscapes that were kind of
manipulated and harmed by by human
beings so sitting back there in the
library I couldn’t imagine what would
happen to me one year later so Yossef
arrived in Israel and Palestine in 2008
he arrived as part of a group of 12
photographers among them were names like
jeff wall Stephen Shore Thomas lute
Rosalyn Fox Solomon and this project was
initiated by a photographer named
Frederick Branagh a French photographer
he had this ambitious idea of bringing
this group of photographers to Israel
and allowing them to be there for an
extensive amount of time giving them all
the infrastructure possible in order to
each create an individual project that
would then become a group exhibition and
a group of monographs and will travel
the world at the very beginning Koudelka
stood up in front of Brennan and
announced that the project that he is
going to make is going to be about
Israeli and Palestinian landscape with a
special
on the wall built by Israel in the West
Bank now Koudelka right first time to
Israel at 2008 it was a kind of tour
that when I was organizing and he came
there and was taken around and only the
last two days he was taken to East
Jerusalem there he saw the wall the wall
at that point you should understand is
an incredible monument it’s a nine meter
high wall concrete it stretches through
a very vast space and when seeing that
wall it’s like a very deep chord in
Koudelka goloka as a child grew up in
czechoslovakia and the german occupation
and then later on as a young man and the
soviet occupation and of course behind
the barrier behind the iron curtain so
he knew very well what walls were about
and how they affect people’s lives so
that’s basically how we met for the
second time but this time face to face
yes so how did that happen well the
project was doing a cooperation with the
Art Academy with my school this was on
the basis of students becoming
assistance to these photographers that
would arrive to Israel while they were
doing their projects in the region and
well this was part of the project
infrastructure and it so happened that
Koudelka was the first photographer to
arrive and I was the first student to be
picked out of a group of students so we
were basically thrown into a car and
drove off to an adventure that none
neither of us really knew how it’s going
to end so only two days after we started
this journey together it took only two
days for me to realize a very very harsh
truth but the last thing that you’re the
critical need is an assistant so he
needed the driver he needed somebody to
translate for him he needed somebody
perhaps to buy the sandwiches and have
it under a tree somewhere but definitely
not an assistant he’s kind of this lone
wolf that works alone completely so
after a few days I was there becoming
more and more frost
it kind of dawned on me that unless I
find something for myself to do by
myself
I will not really manage to last very
long in this project and when attempting
you know I did something that probably
most photography students did as I
thought to myself I must do something I
bought my camera with me when I first
attempted to take the camera out and
start photographing myself
Koudelka you know try to imagine this we
were in this village in the north of the
West Bank we would usually how it went
we would drive we would stop the car to
durka would jump out take his camera
disappear for two hours can come back
and this time
Koudelka jumped out of the car but I had
my camera with me jumped out after him
and started photographing now when he
saw me doing that he turned to me and he
said in a very harsh voice no no way
you’re not gonna hang around me with a
camera leave it in the car you can
imagine I was rather shocked but I was
of course his assistant and an assistant
does what a master tells him to do so I
left the camera in the car but as he was
disappearing I was kind of thinking to
myself imagining this conversation in my
mind in which I would turn to quit dark
at the end of the day and I will tell a
mystic with he’ll come it’s been a great
honor being with you but I will not
continue I’m very lucky to have had
another voice in my mind that voice was
a bit more kind of quiet and said maybe
that’s a bit too presumptuous it kind of
told me perhaps you should try another
way so as the others came back we went
into the car went on to the next
location and the ritual went again he
would step out of the car but I had that
moment in which I had to make a decision
and that decision was to take the camera
again and that’s what I did so Koudelka
is out there and I’m taking my camera
and he’s looking at me and I’m looking
at him and there’s complete silence
between us and then surprisingly he just
walks away and doesn’t say anything
so yeah I’ve never seen anybody
photographing like this
I was completely mesmerised I could
never imagine that that Joseph Koudelka
that I took all the books out in the
library and looked at these photographs
that this is how he photographs you know
back then what I had in my hands was a
camera it was a 5d mark ii and it was it
had a very special feature that feature
was a very high definition video file
today of course every camera has it but
back then in 2009 this was completely
new and that kind of movement that kind
of dance is what I found the most
fascinating
I couldn’t get my eyes of Koudelka and
suddenly holding that camera making
photographs it made a lot of sense to
switch that little dial to the video
mode as that kind of correspondent so
well with that incredible movement and
that’s what I did I switched from the
stills mode to the video mode and
basically started making these short
clips that with time would become longer
and longer and longer so it’s very
important to mention at this point
Koudelka came to Israel throughout four
years from 2009 to 2012 2008 he had this
small excursion but 2009 he actually
started this project and as my great
advantage while you know we would work
these times we would work in these for
years we had could have became four
seven visits in each of these visits he
would come for about three to four weeks
and in each of these weeks we would work
from morning till night
good luck always said you know a
photographer must work as long as
there’s light so that’s about what we
did but my big advantage and I big
advantage were these times in which
Koudelka was not there we had something
in average light five to six months in
which Koudelka was away and I could go
and kind of visit my material
have a look at it and kind of learn what
disasters I was making you know at first
I had a handheld camera I was running
around him I was trying to get him from
many different angles it was a complete
chaos but when I could sit and watch
that and as his project was going
throughout this long period of time I
could also learn and improve myself from
time to time now what I realized is that
if I am to try and depict Koudelka and
the way that he’s working which is what
interests me the most that creative
process of a photographer then I must
start learning from him in order to
learn of him
so I started slowing down I started
trying to imitate the way that he moves
to study it very closely and you know
that master assistant way of imitating
in order to learn I also started putting
my camera on a tripod I did that not
because the other koudelka did it but
because I realized it’s the language of
still photography that I must apply on
my moving image in order to try and
document and depict a photographer
photographing so gradually I started to
understand this and one of my biggest
assets not only the fact that you’re
suppose away one of our biggest assets
was also the fact that
Koudelka didn’t give a damn about what I
was doing
yosef basically needed me around he
needed me for the reasons I mentioned
before but he didn’t care what I was
doing and how I was doing it so I had
that complete freedom to be there with
my camera observe him and and kind of
catch a Koudelka that nobody has really
caught before very genuine
Koudelka very careless and very kind of
natural one in his habitat which is
making photographs so I’ll share with
all people can do something like that
beautiful ask
freeze on the both sides they can defend
or try to that’s the date over what
challenges either but once get can
definite and that destroying it is the
most holy landscape for civilization
so cool Erica is not an easy protagonist
I can tell you that it doesn’t it’s not
a protagonist that gives himself away
very easily what I learned later on as
we were having our journey together is
that at the very beginning Koudelka
actually thought I’m a Mossad agent and
that I’m there to keep an eye on him in
order to prevent him from doing
something he’s not supposed to do or
seeing something he’s not supposed to
see I learned also that that kind of
mentality is something that is very
typical for people that grew up in the
East Bloc and behind the Iron Curtain so
Trust was not an easy thing to get with
your zip code elcome but I think that
point in which things started changing
is when koudelka realized that I as much
as him but even more
I’m extremely affected from what we are
seeing from the places we were visiting
from the people that we met and that
this wall has affected their lives I
kind of learned to and came to the
realization what my society was doing
what my my government was doing and what
it does to others so step by step from
that point on things started to change
and our our trust started to be built
between us a kind of bridge you know so
if it started with him asking me to
leave the camera in the car it ended
with him asking me from which side of
the frame to enter so after four years I
had 130 hours of material and with the
help of the wonderful editorial is a
poor first a film started to emerge out
of this material without a shooting
holyland a film that was never meant to
be come was released in 2015 and have
since traveled to over 50 countries has
been broadcast in many TV stations and
won prizes I never thought I would ever
become a filmmaker but just four weeks
ago I premiered my sorry four months ago
I premiered my second film at the
Berlin Film Festival a film that was
made together with artist Adam Caplan
and I’m now moving on towards my third
film so the meeting with koudelka did
not only produce a film and not only
change my life so profoundly when I met
that hero that I always imagined myself
becoming but it also ended with a
wonderful relationship and a
relationship I never imagined that could
happen and with the with me realizing
and slowly understanding how to shape my
own point of view
so once Koudelka surprised me by telling
me something that I never thought I
would ever hear from him of course it
was said ironically but he said you know
I I need to be very thankful for those
Soviet soldiers who occupied my country
I need to be very thankful because
without that my life would be completely
different but of course it wasn’t the
Warsaw Pact that he needed to thank it
was his own self his own 30 year old
self that in the middle of the night
took his camera went out to the streets
of Prague confronted those tanks and
those soldiers and made a body of work
that impacted not only his life but also
the lives of many others so this is
probably the most important lesson that
I take with me from that adventure with
yours of koudelka it is the lesson of
how never to give up
how never to listen to that voice in you
that tells you you should stop
you should always choose to do always
choose to see and as Koudelka told me he
said I reacted just imagine if I wouldn’t thank you very much
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