More than 150 color shots by the great photographer Robert Capa on display in Modena

The Estensi Galleries in Modena, at the Exhibition Hall, will welcome from Sept. 11, 2021 to Feb. 13, 2022 the exhibition Capa in color, where the public will be able to admire a selection of the color shots of the world-famous photographer Robert Capa. Curated by the International Center of Photography in New York, the exhibition is produced by the Ares Society with the Estensi Galleries. Robert Capa is internationally known for his black-and-white photographs, but he worked regularly with color film until his death in 1954. The exhibition brings together more than 150 color shots, personal letters and notes from the magazines in which they were published.

Capa in color gives the opportunity to explore Robert Capa’s strong connection with color photography through a journey intended to illustrate society after World War II. The exhibition is the result of a project by Cynthia Young, curator of the Robert Capa collection at the International Center for Photography in New York, which was created with the aim of presenting an unknown aspect of the great photographer’s career. It intends to illustrate Capa’s particular approach to new photographic media and his ability to integrate color into his photojournalist work, made between the 1940s and 1950s.

“Today, thanks to the possibility of digital,” says Martina Bagnoli, director of the Estensi Galleries, “we can rediscover and re-evaluate Robert Capa’s ability to photograph in color. All the images in the exhibition were scanned and then chromatically corrected to restore enough color to the films to make them appropriate to the original version, since with the passage of time these, especially those in Ektachrome, had suffered major color losses.” “The long restoration work promoted by the International Center of Photography,” Bagnoli continues, “allows us to return to appreciate Robert Capa in all his nuances. With this initiative, the Estensi Galleries wants to celebrate the color of the past, but also to mark a new beginning ’in color’ for the museum after the long months of gray that the pandemic imposed on all of us.”

Born in Budapest as Endre Friedmann and naturalized U.S. citizen in 1946, Robert Capa was considered by the Picture Post as “the greatest war photographer,” referring to the shots he took during the Spanish Civil War. During World War II, Capa collaborated with many magazines, such as Collier’s and Life, which enabled him to acquire a particular sensitivity in depicting war and devastation. His images symbolized the brutality of conflict and helped change the public’s perception of war photography.

On July 27, 1938, being in China to document the Sino-Japanese War in a report that lasted eight months, Capa wrote to a friend at his New York agency, "Send me immediately twelve rolls of Kodachrome with all the instructions on how to use them, filters, etc... in short, everything I should know, because I have an idea for Life." Although only black-and-white photographs remain from that shoot, except for four images published in Life magazine on October 17, 1938, the letter expresses Capa’s interest in color film work, long before it was widely employed by many other photojournalists.

In 1941, Capa immortalized writer Ernest Hemingway in color at his home in Sun Valley, Idaho, and also used color film during an Atlantic crossing on a freighter with an Allied convoy, a shot that was published by the Saturday Evening Post. Of Capa’s output, reportage of World War II, especially of the Normandy landings, is well known, although he favored black-and-white films in particular. The few color images mainly depict American troops and the French camel corps in Tunisia in 1943.

After World War II, the photographer’s activity turned exclusively toward the use of color film, mainly for photographs for magazines of the time such as Holiday and Ladies’ Home Journal (USA), Illustrated (UK), and Epoca (Italy). Presented to readers for the first time, those images were intended to tell American and European audiences about the daily lives of ordinary people and faraway countries in a radically different way than the war reportage that had guided Capa’s early career. The master’s technical skill, along with the ability to tell the story of human emotions presented in the early black-and-white photographs, allowed him to move skillfully between different types of film, using color to complement the subjects photographed. These early works include photographs of Moscow’s Red Square taken during a trip to the USSR in 1947 with writer John Steinbeck and the lives of early settlers in Israel in 1949-50. For the Generation X project, Capa went to Oslo, Essen, northern Norway and Paris with the goal of capturing the lives and dreams of the young generation born before the war.

Capa’s shots also show readers a portrait of high society, due to his skillful use of color photography. In 1950, he immortalized the most fashionable ski resorts in the Swiss, Austrian and French Alps, and the French beaches of Biarritz and Deauville for the burgeoning tourist market presented by Holiday magazine. He also took various fashion photographs, along the quays of the Seine and in Place Vendome. He had the opportunity to portray actors and directors on film sets, for example Ingrid Bergman in Roberto Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia, Orson Welles in Black Rose, and John Huston in Moulin Rouge. He also made a series of portraits during the same period, such as those of Pablo Picasso, photographed on a beach with his son Claude, or Giacometti in his studio in Paris.

Capa in color aims to show how Robert Capa began to observe the world in a different way and how his work managed to adapt to the new postwar sensibility. The innovative medium of photography forced him not only to reconsider color composition, but also to find the best way to satisfy the curiosity of a public reeling from the conflict. For all the work he produced from the end of the war onward, Capa always employed at least two cameras: one for black-and-white and one for color films, and medium-format Ektachrome films. He continued to work with color films until his demise, including during his trip to Indochina where he was killed in May 1954. In particular, the color shots from Indochina seem to anticipate the images that would dominate the collective imagination of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The collection is presented by ICP-International Center of Photography, thanks to ICP Exhibitions Committee and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

For info: www.capaincolor.it

Image: Robert Capa, Capucine, French model and actress on balcony (Rome, August 1951). Credits Robert Capa, International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos

More than 150 color shots by the great photographer Robert Capa on display in Modena

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