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Robert Capa

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Robert Capa
Born
Endre Friedmann

October 22 1913
Hungary Budapest, Hungary
DiedMay 25 1954 (aged 40)
Vietnam Thai Binh, Vietnam

Robert Capa (Budapest, October 22 1913 – May 25 1954) was a famous war photographer during 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. 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.

Career

Death of a loyalist soldier, 1936.

Born in Hungary as Endre Ernö Friedmann, Capa left the country after taking his baccalaureate in 1932 because of his political involvements with protestors against the 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 (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 it would be recognisable and familiar, as it was close to the filmmaker Frank Capra's name and sounded American. (In fact, "cápa" is a Hungarian word meaning shark.)

Spanish Civil War

D-Day landings, 1944.

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. A Spanish historian identified the dead soldier as Federico Borrell García, from Alcoi (Valencia). There is a second photograph showing another soldier who has fallen on the same spot.[1]

It is by tradition known that the Borrell Garcia picture was made at Cerro Muriano on September 5, 1936, about 1300 Local Zone Time for Spain, this being GMT + 1 hour. The soldier's vertical image, his shadow and the line from his head to its silhouette graphically describe an equilateral triangle. This feature is sufficient to configure and work up a two triangles system containing Garcia supposedly having run sidelong the direction of the sun appearing southwestwards at about 68 degrees azimuth. The line interconnecting Garcia's head and its silhouette on the hillside with [out of picture] trenches has a computed 30 degrees inclination with regard to the horizontal plane which is astronomically parallel to the celestial horizon. When subsequently sun's altitude over Cerro Muriano is checked for 1300 local time, 1200 GMT, it is found to be 59 degrees. It is thence a reasonable assumption that the picture has been taken earlier, or conversely later on the day. For the respective time points we find 0843 and 1655 Local Zone Time [the Time Equation for simplicity deleted ]. In 2002 Richard Whelan in a biographical article of Capa states that Garcia fell in the presence of witnesses as the first of two identified soldiers at the same place at 0500 p.m. in the immediate vicinity of trenches on a slope of Mount Las Malaguenas. The 1655 Local Time solution should therefore be considered representative. If eventually, sun's computed altitude for 1655 LZT over Cerro Muriano is established to be 30 degrees for sun's 7 degrees declination, it is clear that the about 1655 LZT point of time of the recording exactly matches the helio–geographical configuration of Cerro Muriano in coordinates 4 deg 47'–W ; 38 deg–N for September 6, 1936, at about 1555 GMT with sun's azimuth N–247–W. This renders the picture suspicious in a minor sense as far as only the time point is concerned for a for practice zero difference [actually 6 minutes with application of the Time Equation of [+]1 minute for September 5 with Whelan's conclusions and a difference of 4 hours for the traditional point of time, both differences unavoidably suffering some inherent inaccurateness due to graphical measuring . Whatever the outcome of precise timekeeping might be, it does not injure the authenticity of the picture as a live recording made at about 1600 GMT on September 6, 1936.

World War II

D-Day landings, 1944

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 persecutions. 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.[2]

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 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 emulsion in the negatives. Only eight frames in total were recovered.[3]

Although 15-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". [4] Life magazine printed 8 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).[5] Capa used this phrase as the title of his alternately hilarious and sad autobiographical account of the war, Slightly Out of Focus.

In 1948 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, David Seymour, and George Rodger. In 1951, he became the president.

First Indochina War

File:RobertCapaLife05161938.jpg
Capa photo of Chinese soldier

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. After his death the Vietnamese Lieutenant said "Le photographe est mort." ("The photographer is dead")

Private Life

In 1934 "André Friedman", as he called himself at that time, met Gerda Pohorylle, a German Jewish refugee. The couple lived in Paris where André taught Gerda photography. Together they contrived the image of "Robert Capa" as a famous American photographer. Gerda took the name Gerda Taro, becoming successful in her own right. She traveled with Capa to Spain in 1936 with the intention to document the Spanish Civil War. In July 1937 Capa went on a short business trip to Paris while Gerda remained in Madrid. She was killed near Brunete during a battle. Capa who planned to marry Gerda, was deeply shocked and never married.

In 1943 February Capa met Elaine Justin, the beautiful young wife of actor John Austin. They immediately fall in love and the relationship lasted until the end of the war, although Capa spent most of his time in the frontline. Capa lovingly called the redhead Elaine "Pinky," and their romance became the topic of Capa's war memoir, Slightly Out of Focus. In 1945, Elaine broke up with Capa and married his friend, Chuck Romine.

Some months later Capa became the lover of actress Ingrid Bergman who traveled in Europe at the time entertaining American soldiers. In December 1945, Capa followed Bergman to Hollywood where he worked for American International Pictures for a short time. Bergman tried to persuade Capa to marry her but she was rejected, because Capa didn't want to settle in Hollywood. Their troubled romance was immortalized by their common friend Alfred Hitchcock in Rear Window. The relationship ended in summer 1946 when Capa travelled to Turkey.

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".[6]

Quotes

  • "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."
  • "It's not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian."
  • "The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda."
  • "This war is like an actress who is getting old. It is less and less photogenic and more and more dangerous." (Speaking of World War II)
  • "The desire of any war photographer is to be put out of business."


Bibliography

  • Death in the Making, 1938
  • The Battle of Waterloo Road, 1941
  • Invasion!, 1944
  • Slightly Out of Focus, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1947
  • Robert Capa: Photographs,1996
  • Heart of Spain, 1999
  • Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection, 2001
  • Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa, 2002

Notes

  1. ^ [1] Proving that Robert Capa's Falling Soldier is Genuine: a Detective Story, Richard Whelan, American Masters, PBS Website.
  2. ^ Slightly Out of Focus, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1947, p.104.
  3. ^ Slightly Out of Focus, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1947, p. 151
  4. ^ [2] Snapshot, The Weekly Newsletter of A Better Photo website, trivia section.
  5. ^ Slightly Out of Focus, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1947, p. 151. It should be noted that earlier in this account, Capa stated that his "empty camera trembled in my hands." (p.148) This prevented him, however, from loading a new roll of film, not from taking clear shots of the battle.
  6. ^ [3]Overseas Press Club of America, Awards Archive.

References

  • Whelan, Richard (1985) Robert Capa: a biography Knopf, New York, ISBN 0-394-52488-8 ;

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Robert Capa.
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