The Italian Photographer

by Uri Dushy Book 5 in the Art of Resistance series.

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Milan, September 1943. Eva Cantoni photographs the collections of her family’s fashion house on Via Montenapoleone until the Italian armistice is followed by German occupation and anti-Jewish roundups. She repurposes her studio, camera and darkroom to produce photographs for false identity papers, turning commercial image-making into a clandestine operation that offers fugitives a chance to escape.

In 1944, resistance courier Claudia joins Eva while an SS officer based at Hotel Regina hunts the source of the forged documents. In 1999, Chloe follows her late mother’s clues to a house above Lake Orta, where a survivor reveals the connection between the photographer, the resistance and Chloe’s own family. The dual timeline recovers the covert work of women whose images, messages and assumed identities sustained resistance under occupation.