Robert Capa, one of the most prolific and greatest war photographers, died on 25 May 1954 in Indochina after stepping on a land mine while photographing for Life Magazine.
Capa hated war and he used the photographic medium to draw worldwide attention to it. He photographed five wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of China in 1938, World War II, Israel’s struggle for independence in 1948, and the French war in Indochina in 1954 – all of them at close range.
Books by Robert Capa on Amazon
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you are not close enough.”
Robert Capa’s advice on making a good picture.
Robert Capa was born Endre Friedmann on 22 October 1913 in Budapest, Hungary.
Endre left Hungary in 1931 after an encounter with the secret police of fascist dictator of Admiral Horthy. As a 17 year old student, Endre was seen contacting the Communist Party recruiter and was arrested. He was later freed on condition that he leave his homeland.
Endre made his move to Berlin where he studied political science at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik from 1931 to 1933.
Setting out to become a journalist, Endre supported himself while he studied and learnt the new language (he eventually spoke seven languages) by working part-time as a darkroom technician for the Degephot photo agency (though according to Magnum Photo Agency he was with Ullstein magazines). It was there he published his first pictures, in ‘Der Welt Spiegel’, a scoop of Leon Trotsky addressing a 1932 Copenhagen meeting.
As Hitler rose to power, Endre realised that Germany was not a safe place to be Jewish, so at 19 years of age, he became an exile for the second time and moved to Paris in 1933.
Endre Friedmann met his Polish fiancée, Gerda Taro, a journalist and photographer, whilst they worked for the agency Alliance Photo in Paris. Two other photographers that Endre befriended at Alliance were Henri Cartier-Bresson and David “Chim” Seymour with whom he later established Magnum Photo Agency. Endre became André at this time, no doubt to assist his byline.
Robert Capa advised his friend Henri Cartier-Bresson who wanted to pursue his interests in Surrealism, yet wanted to have his photographs published in the 1930s.
“If you call yourself an artist, you won’t get anything published. Call yourself a photojournalist, and then you can do whatever you want.”
Robert Capa to Henri Cartier-Bresson
André and Gerda began to establish themselves as freelance photojournalists. André took the photographs and Gerda sold them. The pair worked for the “famous American photographer Robert Capa” who charged three times the going rate for photojournalism.
“Robert Capa” was André and Gerda’s invention. Lucien Vogel the editor of Vu is said to have uncovered the game when offered Robert Capa pictures, but which he had seen taken by André Friedmann. André continued to work under the name of Robert Capa from then on, officially changing his name. Capa is the Hungarian word for shark.
The story of the young Robert Capa is the basis of John Hersey’s magazine article, “The Man Who Invented Himself.”
“Like the people you shoot and let them know it.”
Robert Capa
In Paris, Robert met and began long associations with many artists including Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. Years later, during WWII Hemingway fractured his skull coming home from a party at Capa’s Dorchester Hotel suite.
In 1936, Generalissimo Franco and an alliance of Monarchists and Fascists moved to overthrow the Spanish government. Like many other anti-fascists, Capa felt he had a responsibility to support their cause and he drew attention to the fight through his photographs.
Capa personalized the struggle of the Spanish loyalists, illuminated the strength and courage of the soldiers who carried on against insufferable odds, and galvanized compassion for the innocent and injured.
Robert and Gerda covered the Spanish Civil War from 1936 and his pictures appeared in Vu, Regards, Ce Soir, Weekly Illustrated and Life Magazine. The book detailing this work is Heart of Spain: Robert Capa’s Photographs of the Spanish Civil War. Capa shot newsreels for March of Time, Time-Life’s film department.
The introduction in the 1920s of the lightweight Leica camera which used 35mm film, meant that for the first time the war photographer was unencumbered by heavy equipment. Pictures like Capa’s had not been seen before and they provided an intimacy of the events in the newspapers that published them.
It is well known that the first photographs seen of a topic have greater impact on an audience than those that follow. Robert Capa was certainly at the right place at the right time, the hallmark of a great photographer.
“The refugees on the road are in the hands of fate, with their lives at stake.”
Robert Capa
His famous picture entitled “Death of a Loyalist Soldier” of the Spanish Republican soldier falling to his death in 1936 brought him international reputation and the photo became one of the best known images of war.
There has been some controversy as to whether “Death of a Loyalist Soldier” was set up and faked. Questions have been raised about Capa’s position in relation to the soldier, why Capa’s camera was focussed at that moment, and why there is no sign of a wound.
The Loyalist is wearing a head-scarf, the knot on his head is often mistaken as a bullet wound. There are no proof sheets and the negatives have been lost. Capa’s recollection of the events contradicts the account by others.
However, research has confirmed that the soldier in the photo was Federico Borrell Garcia and that he was killed that day. Regardless, “Death of a Loyalist Soldier” firmly established Capa’s credentials as a war photographer, and he continued to be on the front line for the rest of his life, through five wars.
In 1938, the car in which Gerda Taro was travelling in Spain was hit by an out-of-control tank and she was crushed beneath its tracks.
Devastated, Capa travelled to China soon afterward to cover the Sino-Japanese war.
At the end of 1938, the prestigious British magazine Picture Post published 26 photographs on 11 pages taken during the Spanish Civil War at the battle of Ebro, in a spread entitled “The Greatest War Photographer in the World: Robert Capa”. Picture Post described Capa as “a passionate democrat.”
Robert Capa emigrated to New York in 1939 and after WWII became a US citizen in 1946.
“The war correspondent has his stake, his life, in his own hands and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute. I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave .”
Robert Capa talking about the D Day landings.
During World War II, Capa worked for Life Magazine and was Collier’s correspondent in Europe. His famous war images included the landing of American troops on Omaha beach, the Liberation of Paris and the battle of the Bulge. He photographed action in North Africa, Sicily and the Italian mainland where he met English photographer George Rodger. Capa parachuted into Germany in 1945 to be close to the action there.
“The bullets tore holes in the water around me”
Robert Capa said about Omaha Beach on D Day.
On D-Day, Capa took three rolls of film, wading through floating bodies, scared so silly that he went back to a landing craft where an explosion blew one man up all over the skipper.
He sent the rolls back to Life Magazine in London. In a rush to view the images, the darkroom technician, Dennis Banks did not open the film dryer vent causing the dryer and negatives in it to overheat, melting the emulsion on all but 11 frames!
The emulsion also ran on the remaining 11 exposures giving the effect of being slightly out of focus – Slightly Out of Focus being the title of Robert Capa’s book on the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach.
Although furious at the accident, Capa told the editors that he would never work for Life Magazine again if they fired the assistant responsible.
In 1946, after more than a decade of front-line reporting, says Alex Kershaw in Blood and Champagne, “Capa had started to exhibit many of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder: restlessness, heavy drinking, irritability, depression, survivor’s guilt, lack of direction and barely concealed nihilism.” Capa was also famous as a gambler, obviously enjoying the risk taking.
“To me war is like an aging actress – more and more dangerous and less and less photogenic.”
Robert Capa
Relaxing in the Ritz Hotel in Paris after the Liberation, Capa and the writer Irwin Shaw, came across actress Ingrid Bergman in the lobby. Within weeks Capa and Bergman were having a passionate affair that was to last two years.
In 1946 she returned to Hollywood, and to her husband, to begin work on Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Capa followed and spent a few months on Hollywood writing a film script, which was never made, on his war memoirs. It is said that his presence on the set inspired Hitchcock’s Rear Window.
Robert Capa moved to New York and his relationship with Bergman ended amicably. Her daughter Isabella Rossellini later remarked to Bergman that it was incredible that she had such a lover.
Magnum Photo Agency, named after a large bottle of champagne was founded in 1947 by Robert Capa over lunch with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert. Magnum is based on the philosophy that the photographer retain both the negative and the copyright of their photographs.
Capa continued to photograph those in his circle: Matisse, Picasso, Bogart and Bergman, proving his adeptness at photographing people other than in conflict.
John Steinbeck and Robert Capa went to Russia together in 1948 and jointly published A Russian Journal, although the cold war was not a subject that he warmed to. Steinbeck later praised Capa for his ability to “show the horror of a whole people in the face of a child.”
“They got too close this time”
Capa said for a moment he thought he had lost his genitals.
In 1948 Capa was on assignment in Israel with Irwin Shaw, where the pair completed a number of stories for Holiday on Israel’s struggle for independence. Robert Capa was grazed by a bullet on his inner thigh while photographing the fighting in Tel Aviv and shaken by the experience, promised never again to photograph war.
Robert Capa became the president of Magnum Photo Agency in 1951 and he initiated several group projects involving all his colleagues.
“This is going to be a beautiful story. I will be on my good behaviour today. I will not insult my colleagues, and I will not once mention the excellence of my work.”
Capa said as he set out from the village of Nam Dinh, in Vietnam’s Red River delta, on 25 May 1954.
In 1954, Life Magazine asked him to return to the fray, to fill in for a photographer who had fallen ill and was unable to travel to French Indochina (now VietNam) to cover the war there between the French and the communist Viet Minh. Capa was short of cash after holidays in Japan and Europe and agreed, for one month. Capa arrived in Hanoi on May 9th.
Two weeks later and two weeks before he was leaving, on 25 May 1954, at the age of 40, Capa died when he stepped on a land mine in the Red River Delta, Tonkin, on the road to Thai Binh.
He had been accompanying some French colonialists in a convoy and when it was halted by an ambush. Capa followed a platoon into a field beside the road in order to photograph them. He made two exposures. Moments later he stepped on a landmine. The Zeiss Ikon Contax II he had used during the invasion at Normandy was clutched in his hand. Je ne suis pas heureux.
“I am going up the road a little bit. Look for me when you get started.”
Robert Capa’s last words, Indochina 1954.
Capa used the camera to portray the human side of war and to make a statement in the way a journalist would use words. Capa undoubtedly took sides in the wars he photographed, and even though he had loyalties with the French (Paris was the only place he called home) he did not support their colonialism and he was deeply moved by the plight of the Vietnamese children.
He was awarded the War Cross with Palm by the French Army. In 1955, the Overseas Press Club established the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award to reward “superlative photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad”. Recipients of this medal include Horst Faas.
The famous American photographer Robert Capa, aka André Friedmann, aka Endre Friedmann, aka The Man Who Invented Himself, aka The Greatest War Photographer in the World, is buried in the Quaker cemetery in Amawalk, New York state, USA.
Further Reading
Books by Robert Capa on Amazon
Partial Bibliography of books by and about war photographer Robert Capa:
Death in the Making, 1938 by Gerda Taro, Robert Capa
The Battle of Waterloo Road, 1941 by Robert Capa
Invasion!, 1944 by Robert Capa
Slightly Out of Focus, 1947 Paperback
A Russian Journal, 1948 by John Steinbeck, Robert Capa Hardcover
Report on Israel, 1950 by Robert Capa
Robert Capa, 1913-1954 by Robert Capa
Images of War, 1964
Robert Capa, 1974 (reprint 1994) by Jean Lacouture, et al
Robert Capa: A Biography, 1985 by Richard Whelan
Robert Capa: Photographs,1985
Robert Capa: Photographs from Israel,1988
Capa & Capa: Brothers in Photography, 1990
Children of War, Children of Peace, 1991 by Cornell Capa (Robert’s brother)
Robert Capa: Photographs,1996 by Henri Cartier-Bresson, et al Paperback
Heart of Spain: Robert Capa’s Photographs of the Spanish Civil War, 1999
Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection, 2001 by Cornell Capa and Richard Whelan
Les Grandes photos de la guerre d’Espagne by Robert Capa
Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina by Horst Faas & Tim Page
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