Photography Collection

Robert Capa formed the collective consciousness of war in Europe and the USA with his photos. After all he covered five different wars before he stepped on a landmine in Indochina: The Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 - 1945), World War II, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the First Indochina War (1946 - 1954). On December 3, 1938 Picture Post introduced him with a spread of 26 photographs taken at the battle of Ebro. The «greatest war photographer» hated war. He was born Andre Friedman, a Jew from Budapest, and studied political science at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin (1931-33). At the same time he was working part-time in the lab of the Ullstein magazines group to whom he sold his first published picture of Leon Trotsky’s 1931 Copenhagen meeting. Driven out of the country by the beginnings of the Nazi regime, he settled in Paris in 1933. In Paris he participated in the beginnings of the agency Alliance Photo and met the journalist and photographer, Gerda Taro. Together they invented the «famous» American photographer Robert Capa and sold his prints under that name. He met many artists, among them Picasso and Hemingway, and began friendships with colleagues that would be essential in the creation of Magnum, such as David «Chim» Seymour and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Beginning in 1936, Capa’s coverage of the Spanish Civil War appeared regularly in Vu, Regards, Ce Soir, Weekly Illustrated and Life. His 1936 picture of the Loyalist soldier falling to his death brought him international reputation and became a powerful symbol of war. In Spain Capa also shot newsreels for March of Time, Time-Life’s film department. After his companion Gerda Taro was killed in Spain Capa traveled to China (1938), then emigrated to New York in 1939. From 1939-45 he photographed World War II (most famously the landing of American troops in Omaha beach, the Liberation of Paris and the battle of the Bulge) as a Life and Collier’s correspondent in Europe. In 1947 he founded Magnum Photos, in conjunction with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert. The next year Capa traveled to Russia with John Steinbeck, and from 1948-1950 to Israel with Irwin Shaw, completing the first of a number of stories for Holiday. In 1951 he became president of Magnum and initiated several group projects involving all his colleagues. Robert Capa died on May 25, 1954, in Thai-Binh, Indochina, after stepping on a land mine while photographing for Life. He was awarded the War Cross with Palm by the French army. The Robert Capa Gold Medal Award was established in 1955 to reward exceptional professional merit.

John Steinbeck once wrote that his friend Robert Capa knew that “you cannot photograph war, because it is largely an emotion.” However, continued Steinbeck, “he did photograph that emotion by shooting beside it. He could show the horror of a whole people in the face of a child.”