Through 160 photographs and numerous period magazines, this volume, edited by Clément Chéroux and Walter Guadagnini, offers a fresh, unique, and comprehensive overview of the relationship between Henri Cartier-Bresson – « the eye of the century », as he has been called – and Italy. It was an enduring relationship, strengthened by his love for and deep knowledge of the country, that gave rise to some of Cartier-Bresson’s most iconic images and, by extension, some of the most recognized photographs of the twentieth century.
A native of Normandy and a Parisian by adoption, Cartier-Bresson first visited Italy in 1932, when he was just twenty-four years old, and returned regularly over the following decades, particularly in the 1950s. The reasons were many: sometimes he travelled for pleasure, other times on assignment for major international magazines such as Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Holiday, and Vogue, or on commission for companies, notably Adriano Olivetti’s. For forty years, until shortly before gradually turning away from professional photography in the mid-1970s, he journeyed extensively up and down the country, including the islands.
Catalog of the exhibition at Palazzo Rovella from September 28, 2024 to January 26, 2025.
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