Robert Capa

Robert Capa (Budapest, October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was possibly the most famous war photographer of the 20th century. He 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. Capa 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.

Career

Born in Hungary as Endré Ernő Friedmann, Capa left the country at an early age because of his political involvements with protestors against the fascist government. He was arrested once, and his parents suggested he try to settle elsewhere.

Capa originally wanted to be a writer. However, he first 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 (Capa 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 it would be recognisable and familiar, as it was close to the filmmaker Frank Capra's name and sounded American.

Spanish Civil War

From 1936 to 1939, he was in Spain, photographing the horrors 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. Historians eventually succeeded in identifying the dead soldier as Federico Borrell García, from Alcoy (Valencia) and proved it authentic.

World War II

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 the anti-Semitism prevalent in Europe before the war. 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 Greater Nazi Germany, 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 first 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 108 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 negatives. Only eleven frames in total were recovered.

Although 15-year-old lab assistant named Dennis Banks was responsible for the accident, an apocryphal account (which, despite being accepted as untrue, has gained widespread currency), blames 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 founded Magnum Photos with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, Bill Vandivert and George Rodger. In 1951, he became the president.

First Indochina War

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 2:55PM, 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 a loud explosion was heard by Mecklin and Lucas. 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.

Legacy

In order to preserve the photographic heritage of Robert Capa and other photographers, Cornell Capa, his brother, founded the International Fund for Concerned Photography in 1966. To give this collection a permanent home he founded the International Center of Photography in New York City in 1974.

The Overseas Press Club created an award in his honor, the Robert Capa Gold Medal. It is given annually to the photographer who provides the "best published photographic reporting from abroad, requiring exceptional courage and enterprise".