Ikonar is the nickname given to Josef Koudelka by a group of Roma he encountered on his travels. They refer to him as a "maker of icons" because they used his famous photographs of Roma communities as quasi-religious icons in their place of prayer. Koudelka being a globally respected "maker of photographs", he considers himself more as a “collector of his own images” than as a photographer. Ikonar. Archival Constellations, which covers the period from 1960 to 2012, makes a wide range of materials available to the public, some of them unpublished. They were selected from the 30,000-plus 35 mm contact sheets in Koudelka’s archive.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same title at Photo Elysée in Lausanne, this book presents portfolios of core series of his work shot in 35 mm format. These are interleaved with seven thematic constellations that represent a logical extension of his archive.

An essay reconstructing in detail the making of the Gypsies book, in its successive versions, complements this catalogue. All of this allows for parallel visual explorations of Koudelka’s work and its evolving processes of creation.