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The Soviets did not care for the “socialism with a hu-
man face” that Alexander Dubcek’s government brought
to Czechoslovakia. Fearing that Dubcek’s human-rights
reforms would lead to a democratic uprising like the one
in Hungary in 1956, Warsaw Bloc forces set out to quash
the movement. Their tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia on
August 20, 1968. And while they quickly seized control of
Prague, they unexpectedly ran up against masses of flag-
waving citizens who threw up barricades, stoned tanks,
overturned trucks and even removed street signs in order
to confuse the troops. Josef Koudelka, a young Moravian-
born engineer who had been taking wistful and gritty pho-
tos of Czech life, was in the capital when the soldiers ar-
rived. He took pictures of the swirling turmoil and created
a groundbreaking record of the invasion that would change
the course of his nation. The most seminal piece includes a
man’s arm in the foreground, showing on his wristwatch a
moment of the Soviet invasion with a deserted street in the
distance. It beautifully encapsulates time, loss and empti-
ness—and the strangling of a society.
Koudelka’s visual memories of the unfolding conflict—
with its evidence of the ticking time, the brutality of the
attack and the challenges by Czech citizens—redefined
photojournalism. His pictures were smuggled out of
Czechoslovakia and appeared in the London Sunday Times
in 1969, though under the pseudonym P.P. for Prague Pho-
tographer since Koudelka feared reprisals. He soon fled,
his rationale for leaving the country a testament to the
power of photographic evidence: “I was afraid to go back to
Czechoslovakia because I knew that if they wanted to find
out who the unknown photographer was, they could do it.”