Robert Capa

A rich selection of Robert Capa’s work as a war photographer.

In 1938 Robert Capa was described by the prestigious English magazine Picture Post as „The best war photographer in the world“. Although his work is in many ways lyrical and sometimes even witty – enough to be comparable to that of other photographers such as Andre Kertesz or Henri Cartier-Bresson – the visual strength and the incisiveness of his photographs, in addition to the amount of reports produced still justify this flattering judgment today. The book therefore proposes a rich selection of his work as a war photographer, through images created during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), China’s resistance to the Japanese invasion (1938), the Second World War – between in particular the documentation of the landing in Normandy – and again the first Arab-Israeli conflict (1948), and the French one in Indochina (1954), during which he died, killed by a mine.

Capa’s images still strike today for their immediacy, for the empathy and humanity that they are able to communicate: more than the battles, Capa tells the war events through the looks of the civilian population, of the children, and of all the survivors that, despite the losses and the destruction, they succeed, with admirable strength and dignity, to go forward: images that have entered indelibly into the twentieth century. The book also documents some photographs of famous people – from Picasso to Hemingway, from Matisse to Ingrid Bergman – that show the quality of Capa’s portraits. The catalogue includes the re-publication of a historical text by Richard Whelan, introductory texts for each section and biographical apparatus.

Text in English, Italian and French.