Robert Capa. Nella storia

On the occasion of the 110th anniversary of Robert Capa’s birth (Oct. 22, 1913), we pay tribute to the great Hungarian photographer with a solo exhibition that covers the major war and travel reportages Capa made during his 20-year career, years that coincided with crucial moments in the history of the 20th century.

Realized thanks to a collaboration with the Magnum Photos agency, the exhibition brings together an exceptional body of photographs: more than 80 original prints, some of which have never before been shown in an Italian exhibition, accompanied by a rare interview given by the photojournalist to an American radio station in 1947 and some period documents from Magnum’s collection.

Through seven sections and with a diachronic path, Robert Capa’s most important black-and-white reportages are recounted, from his beginnings in Berlin and Paris (1932-1936) to the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939); from the Japanese invasion of China (1938) to World War II (1941-1945); from his travel reportage in the Soviet Union (1947) to that on the birth of Israel (1948-1950), to his last assignment as a war photographer in Indochina (1954).

In his 20-year career, he has told the story while always staying true to his famous aphorism, “if your pictures are not good enough, it means you were not close enough.”

Action-with all its dynamism and propulsive force-stands out among the shots like a common thread, which also unravels in the portraits in the exhibition, deliberately few in number and chosen to remind the public of the faces of History-such as that of Trockij’s ardent orator-or of his personal history, such as that of Picasso, photographed in his Paris studio where he had remained even during the occupation, and of his friend Steinbeck with whom he undertook the journey beyond the Iron Curtain in ’47.