ROBERT CAPA (1913-1954)
The short but constantly momentous life of photographer Robert Caparesulted in many of history’s most iconic pictures, capturing scenes of many wars, historic sites, and contemporary luminaries ranging from Picasso to Bogart to Hemingway. Originally named Endre Friedmann, he joined Budapest’s leftist avant-garde art scene in his youth, and by age 18 was persecuted and driven out of Hungary; he first worked as a photographer in Berlin before being driven out again when the Nazis seized power. While living in Paris he changed his name to boost his freelance prospects, and soon began covering the Spanish Civil War; Capa’s up-close image of a freshly shot Republican militiaman, titled “The Falling Soldier”, earned him international renown. After covering China’s resistance to the Japanese invasion in 1938, Capa was embedded with US troops during their liberation of Sicily and for D-Day attacks on Omaha beach, where he shot 106 photos while under fire (all but 11 of them were destroyed in a photo-lab accident). Acclaimed for emotive portrayals of life in war that forever changed the nature of photojournalism, Capa also took portraits of movie stars (including his lover Ingrid Bergman), and he was a founder of the Magnum Photos cooperative agency; his legacy is honored in Budapest at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center.