Mr Gabriele Micalizzi is in the market for a watch. It’s been a few years since he lost the one given to him by his late father, a “beautiful, minimal” Montblanc hand-wound chronograph. And, given its sentimental value, he hasn’t found anything to replace it yet. Well, that and the fact that his job has certain demands. Micalizzi is, arguably, the foremost war photographer of his generation.

“I suppose I should really wear a Casio G-Shock or something really tough,” says the Italian, whose work is now on show at 29 Arts In Progress Gallery in his hometown of Milan. “But for me, it’s all about style. I think I’d rather destroy or lose a really nice watch than wear the kind of macho watch I see all the soldiers of the US Army wear.”

And certainly, Micalizzi has done that. His Montblanc went missing in the middle of riots in Gaza. “There was a lot of shooting during the street battles, burning tyres to make smoke, a lot of confusion,” he says. “I was sad to see that one go.”

There was the Festina; he has no idea where that went. And the Rolex Oyster his father gave him – a nod perhaps to the fact that Sir Don McCullin, the legendary war photographer and Micalizzi’s hero, had a deal with Rolex – almost expecting that one not to last long, either.

“Actually, that one was a fake,” Micalizzi laughs. “As my dad told me when he gave it to me. He said, ‘Don’t worry. It looks the same as the real thing.’ I remember being in this vintage watch dealer’s and him going out of his way to tell me it was a counterfeit. I was like, ‘It’s OK, I’m not in here to try to sell it to you…’”

No wonder Micalizzi, 40, has a somewhat tortured relationship with his timepieces. On the one hand, he was brought up to love them. His father worked in the watch industry as a sales agent for Swatch; Micalizzi’s first watch was a red Flik Flak with a cartoon character on the dial. That didn’t survive playing football.

But, on the other hand, war zones are not conducive to their enjoyment. Micalizzi has been at every major conflict of the last two decades, from Iraq to Afghanistan, Libya to the Syrian civil war, through to, more recently, Gaza and Ukraine, where he was the only non-partisan photographer to be embedded with the Russians in Donbas. That was a tough assignment, he notes. Very flat countryside. No cover.

“The work teaches you not to get too attached to objects,” the Leica Master of Photography award recipient says. “And, really, when you’re photographing people in these really terrible situations, it’s a reminder that such objects are really not that important. If a watch is lost or destroyed, you just need to replace it and move on. Everything gets smashed in the end. War is just too chaotic for to worry about your nice watch.”

Get him off the subject of wrist candy and he’ll somewhat reluctantly tell tales of trying to stem the blood pouring from what was left of some soldier’s foot. “There’s that idea of war photographers being a ‘ghost on the scene’, but you just can’t just push away your humanity sometimes,” he says. Of losing his fingertip to shrapnel and being hospitalised after an RPG attack. Or the time he had to cram himself along the length of a makeshift morgue between the 30 or so stiffening bodies. “It’s a smell I’ll never forget. Like rotting fish,” he says. “There are things you can’t get out of your head once you’ve seen them.”

Indeed, in the field a watch gets used in ways that most of us would never consider. If you ever wondered what a chronograph was really for, other than a complication to show off, Micalizzi uses his to estimate how far away a sniper shot came from. Or to take a guess at distance travelled along remote desert roads from which all road signs have been removed to better thwart invaders. Or as a form of insurance when you’ve run out of cash.

“It’s something to trade, an escape plan you can wear,” Micalizzi says. “Because if you run out of cash, you’re a long way from a working ATM. When there’s typically no electricity, you really appreciate analogue things, too.”

In fact, if there’s enough time, he still prefers to shoot on film. “Photographers love equipment,” he says. “Cameras and watches all feel part of the same world. And, of course, there’s the way watches express that sense of time, of capturing the right moment, that is so important to photographers. I think photo reportage in particular leans toward an appreciation for old things, as much as tech is important to what I do.”

His new show is called A Kind Of Beauty and Micalizzi concedes that it can be odd, even embarrassing, to suggest that the imagery of war might have an aesthetic quality to it. “But even war photographs still have a person behind the lens,” he says. “They still have a point of view.”

And taking these photos takes its toll. He reckons he’ll be able to work on the front lines for another five years and then will have reached his physical and, more pertinently, his mental limit. Then he’ll be more focused on his sideline, shooting portraits for the likes of Rolling Stone magazine.

“Whenever I do that, I always seem be surrounded by incredible watches,” he says. “I need to find a good one I can look after by then.”