Robert Capa: In The Making

Photographer, filmmaker and war correspondent Robert Capa is a legend of photojournalism. His work – widely recognised and disseminated, although sometimes criticised for its truthfulness – is integral to the history of the photograph. This title retraces his work through images from private collections published for the first time. It contextualises Capa’s groundbreaking photographs through original articles and his own rarely seen notes on the margins of prints.

Capa covered all the major midcentury events: from the Front Populaire in France to the Spanish Civil War, World War II and finally the First Indochina War, where he lost his life. Together with his most iconic works, these rarely seen images construct a complete story, particularly how they were used and published. Reproductions of original newspaper articles illustrated by Capa’s images create new narratives through which to judge his documentation.

Le Monde journalist Michel Lefebvre interprets the hidden details omitted through the years; the writing on the backs of the prints, a detail on a note, a place left out or a date that changes are all clues that reconstruct this immense corpus.