Élysée photo: in the footsteps of photographer Josef Koudelka, the "icon maker"

Special correspondent in Lausanne (Switzerland)

Turquoise eyes, disheveled white hair, unsteady gait but strong voice, Josef Koudelka emerges like a djinn from this envelope of an 84-year-old photographer, far too wise for him.

Multi-pocketed jacket as always, he brazenly leans on a cane to show his young Italian son and his godson his retrospective “Ikonar, constellations of archives” at Photo Élysée, the new Platform 10 museum in Lausanne.

He pauses for a minute to greet you the old-fashioned way, laughs like a young man, puts an end to cumbersome pleasantries and quickly returns to his passion, photography.

There are so many images of him that show him leaping like a lion from a mezzanine at Magnum's annual general meeting in 1979, sleeping on the floor of a flat in London in 1982, in his thin backpacker's duvet , or under the offices of Magnum, rue des Grands-Augustins, in Paris in 1989. He has this tremendous vitality in him which, even sick during…

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