Robert Capa

ROBERT CAPA (Budapest, 1913 – Vietnam, 1954).
“Family Picnic in the Park, Osaka,” 1992.
Print.
Stamped on the back.
Measurements: 28 x 35 cm.

Hungarian war photographer and photojournalist, as well as the partner and professional collaborator of photographer Gerda Taro. Robert Capa is considered by some to be the greatest war photographer. Capa fled political repression in Hungary as a teenager and moved to Berlin, where he enrolled in university. He witnessed Hitler’s rise to power, which led him to move to Paris, where he met and began working with Gerta Pohorylle. Together they worked under the alias Robert Capa and became photojournalists. Although he contributed much of the early work, she quickly established her own alias, “Gerda Taro,” and they began publishing their work separately. She subsequently covered five wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II in Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War, with her photos published in major magazines and newspapers. Throughout her career, she risked her life on numerous occasions, being the only civilian photographer to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day. She documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, and the liberation of Paris. His friends and colleagues included Ernest Hemingway, Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck, and director John Huston. In 1947, for his work capturing World War II in images, U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower awarded Capa the Medal of Freedom. That same year, Capa co-founded Magnum Photos in Paris. The organization was the first cooperative agency for independent photographers from around the world.