Strange Echoes

I just got the new book of Josef Koudelka's pictures from the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 - "Invasion 68" - and found myself reading about Russian tanks rolling over borders in an Olympic year... No parallels with 2008 then...

There are some sample pages from the book here. Reading it is actually something like watching a really good documentary - the photos are chronological and interspersed with eyewitness reports, government communiques, extracts from the ad hoc anti-invasion press, and timelines. You really do get a sense of the momentum of those few days, like a fevered dream. A lot of the images are extraordinary too. I also liked the collections of anti-Soviet graffiti: mostly clever, pointed and bitterly funny, somewhat reminiscent of the Paris commune. It must be said that, whatever you might think of their various causes, 1968 was a golden year for rapid, witty sloganising.

One gripe though - a few images are ruined by having key details disappear into the book's gutter. Something that inexplicably often happens in photo books... Highly recommended though, both for the photographs and the reminded of how often history eats its own tail.