The Palazzo Grimani Museum in Venice celebrates the figure of the photographer Inge Morath (Graz 1923 – New York 2002) with an unpublished section for Italy dedicated to the lagoon city where her career began. It was love that led Inge Morath and Lionel Burch, newly weds, to Venice in November 1951. And it was the bad weather in the Lagoon and Robert Capa that made her, who was not directly familiar with photography but who already collaborated with the famous Parisian photographic agency, become the first female photographer of the Magnum Photos Agency.

The exhibition that can be admired at the Palazzo Grimani Museum from 18 January to 4 June 2023 focuses on Inge Morath 's Venice , through the famous reportage that the Austrian photographer made in the Lagoon, when the Magnum Agency sent her to the city on behalf of L' Oeil, an art magazine that had chosen to accompany a reportage by the legendary Mary McCarthy with Venetian glimpses. “Inge Morath Photographing from Venice onwards” is curated by Kurt Kaidl and Brigitte Blüml, with Valeria Finocchi; promoted by the Veneto Regional Directorate of Museums (director Daniele Ferrara) and the Suazes company which, a few years ago, made the career of this photographer known in detail in Italy.

At the time of her first stay in Venice, Morath worked for Magnum not as a photographer but as an editorial assistant. In practice she took care, also thanks to her knowledge of languages, of the creation of the captions that accompanied the images of her fellow photographers, of the caliber of Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger and Robert Capa. She did not photograph, but she did not miss them eye and sensitivity. In that November, the light of Venice in the rain bewitched her, so much so that she called Robert Capa, Magnum manager, to suggest that he send a photographer capable of capturing the magic that was so amazing her. Capa replied that a Magnum photographer in Venice was already there: it was her with the camera. All that was left was to buy a roll of film, load it and start photographing.