The internationally acclaimed and award-winning Italian photojournalist Paolo Pellegrin, a member of the renowned agency Magnum Photos, will be presented in our serie of exhibitions dedicated to the biggest photographers of our time. Pellegrin's photography sheds light on global conflicts, environmental catastrophes and the stories of marginalised people.

Jakopič Gallery presents a major exhibition of work by Paolo Pellegrin (b. 1964, Rome), one of Italy’s most prominent photographers and a globally acclaimed photojournalist. Over the course of more than three decades, Pellegrin has become a leading visual chronicler of conflict, human suffering, and resilience. A full member of Magnum Photos since 2005 and the recipient of eleven World Press Photo awards and the Robert Capa Gold Medal among others, he is known for a distinctive visual language that blends expressive use of light and shadow with lyrical, deeply empathetic storytelling.

An anthology is not a chronological retrospective, but a carefully curated dialogue among photographic series spanning continents and decades. It opens with three nearly black images of interiors from Gaza, where light enters only through ruptures left by gunfire – fragments of trauma and survival. It concludes with almost entirely white photographs from Antarctica, where cracks in the snow hint at unseen instability beneath a surface of purity. Between these two poles of darkness and light, blackness and whiteness, lies the full complexity of humanity – captured through Pellegrin's lens attuned to every shade in between.

The exhibition takes us from war-torn cities to scenes of environmental collapse, from fleeting moments of hope to the aftermath of destruction. Pellegrin's early project on ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing Kosovo (1999) already reveals his instinct for intimacy and expressive form. He went on to document major global crises: the second Palestinian intifada (2002–2004), the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (2002–2003), the conflict in Darfur (2004), the Indian Ocean tsunami (2005), and Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon (2006). His sustained focus on Gaza – from Operation Cast Lead (2009) to young civilians bearing the the lasting scars of war (2012) – remains among the most powerful visual testimonies in contemporary photojournalism.

In Syria and ISIS-held Mosul (2016), Pellegrin captured the devastation of urban warfare and its toll on civilians. In parallel, his work on migration across the Mediterranean (Libya and Greece, 2015) exposes political failure and human vulnerability. His most recent series from Ukraine (2022/2023) likewise reveals his distinctive approach – a departure from the spectacle of war toward the quiet acts of collective mourning. Rather than scenes of combat, Pellegrin captures civilians kneeling by roadsides as fallen soldiers are returned home – images that foreground grief, solidarity, and dignity. Beyond conflict, his practice extends to environmental issues with stark images from Antarctica (2017) and Australia’s forest fires (2022), confronting viewers with the fragility of nature.

Photographs, several among them vintage prints, and videos have been carefully selected from Pellegrin’s personal archive and the archive of Magnum Photos, which also produced the exhibition and collaborated with Jakopič Gallery. An extensive monograph, Event horizon, published by Marsilio Arte, is available for purchase.