Robert Capa
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free encyclopedia)
Robert
Capa (Budapest, October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was a 20th century combat
photographer who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the
Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948
Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. He documented the course of
World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, the Battle of Normandy on
Omaha Beach and the liberation of Paris. Capa's younger brother, Cornell
Capa, is also a photographer.
Born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary in 1913 as Endre Ernő Friedmann, Capa
left the country in 1932 after being arrested because of his political
involvement with protestors against the government (his parents had
encouraged him to settle elsewhere).
Capa originally wanted to be a writer; however, he found work in
photography in Berlin and grew to love the art. In 1933, he moved from
Germany to France because of the rise of Nazism (he was Jewish), but found
it difficult to find work there as a freelance journalist. He adopted the
name "Robert Capa" around this time because he felt that it would be
recognizable and American-sounding since it was similar to that of film
director Frank Capra.
From 1936 to 1939, he was in Spain, photographing the horrors of the
Spanish Civil War. In 1936 he became known across the globe for a photo he
took on the Cordoba Front of a Loyalist Militiaman who had just been shot
and was in the act of falling to his death. Because of his proximity to
the victim and the timing of the capture, there was a long controversy
about the authenticity of this photograph. A Spanish historian identified
the dead soldier as Federico Borrell García, from Alcoi (Valencia). There
is a second photograph showing another soldier who fell on the same spot.
Many of Capa's photographs of the Spanish Civil War were, for many
decades, presumed lost, but surfaced in Mexico City in the late 1990s.
While fleeing Europe in 1939, Capa had lost the collection, which over
time came to be dubbed the "Mexican suitcase". Ownership of the collection
was transferred to the Capa Estate, and in December, 2007, moved to the
International Center of Photography, a museum founded by Capa's younger
brother Cornell in Manhattan.
At the start of World War II, Capa was in New York City. He had moved
there from Paris to look for new work and to escape Nazi persecution. The
war took Capa to various parts of the European Theatre on photography
assignments. He first photographed for Collier's Weekly, before switching
to Life after he was fired by the former. When first hired, he was a
citizen of Hungary, but he was also Jewish, which allowed him to negotiate
visas to Europe. He was the only "enemy alien" photographer for the
Allies. On October 7, 1943, Robert Capa was in Naples with Life reporter
Will Lang Jr. and photographed the Naples post office bombing.
His most famous work occurred on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) when he swam ashore
with the second assault wave on Omaha Beach. He was armed with two Contax
II cameras mounted with 50 mm lenses and several rolls of spare film. Capa
took 106 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion. However, a
staff member at Life made a mistake in the darkroom; he set the dryer too
high and melted the emulsion in the negatives. Only eleven frames in total
were recovered.
Although a fifteen-year-old lab assistant named Dennis Banks was
responsible for the accident, another account, now largely accepted as
untrue but which gained widespread currency, blamed Larry Burrows, who
worked in the lab not as a technician but as a "tea-boy". Life
magazine printed 10 of the frames in its June 19, 1944 issue with captions
that described the footage as "slightly out of focus", explaining that
Capa's hands were shaking in the excitement of the moment (something which
he denied). Capa used this phrase as the title of his alternately
hilarious and sad autobiographical account of the war, Slightly Out of
Focus.
In 1947 Capa traveled into the Soviet Union with his friend, writer John
Steinbeck. He took photos in Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi, Batumi and among the
ruins of Stalingrad. The humorous reportage of Steinbeck, A Russian
Journal was illustrated with Capa's photos. It was first published in
1948.
In 1947, Capa founded Magnum Photos with Henri Cartier-Bresson, William
Vandivert, David Seymour, and George Rodger. In 1951, he became the
president.
In the early 1950s, Capa traveled to Japan for an exhibition associated
with Magnum Photos. While there, Life magazine asked him to go on
assignment to Southeast Asia, where the French had been fighting for eight
years in the First Indochina War. Despite the fact he had sworn not to
photograph another war a few years earlier, Capa accepted and accompanied
a French regiment with two other Time-Life journalists, John Mecklin and
Jim Lucas. On May 25, 1954 at 2:55 p.m., the regiment was passing through
a dangerous area under fire when Capa decided to leave his jeep and go up
the road to photograph some of the advance. About five minutes later,
Mecklin and Lucas heard a loud explosion. Capa had stepped on a landmine.
When they arrived on the scene he was still alive, but his left leg had
been blown to pieces and he had a serious wound in his chest. Mecklin
screamed for a medic and Capa's body was taken to a small field hospital
where he was pronounced dead on arrival. He had died with his camera in
his hand.
