"I hate violence and the thing I hate most is war."
-Robert Capa
"FRANCE. 1944. Calvados. St Laurent-sur-Mer. German soldiers captured by American forces." Image from Magnum Photos
Robert Capa also known originally as Endre Friedmann, born October 22. 1913, Budapest, Hungary. He was raised in Hungary and lived there up until he chose to make his way to Germany. He decided to study in college but found it to be unsatisfying. At this point he started out as a darkroom assistant.
By 1932 he decided to leave college and pursue photography. Soon after, he left Germany due to the rise of the Nazi party lead by Hitler, to Paris. In 1934, Capa met Gerda Taro(also known as Gerda Pohorylles), whom also had fled Nazi Germany, photojournalist, and companion. She was a key part of his future success in photojournalism. Gerda shared his photographs under a created character named "Bob Capa", from America. Thinking that agencies would pay more for images from an American, and she was right! Eventually the agencies found out, thus after he came clean and admitted that he had lied, he permanently changed his name to Robert Capa.
Slowly, his photos became published and began getting recognition. He went on his first assignment as a war photographer in 1936, Spain. This is when he shot one of the most famous images he took, “Death of a Loyalist Soldier”. This marked the beginning of the high point in his career as a war photographer. Overall in his photojournalism career, he covered about five wars, a few elections, and the official founding of the state of Israel.
He also became one of the founders of “Magnum Photos”. This was so that members could keep/ maintain their copyright of their own images. He eventually went on one of his last assignments in Indochina, and died May 25, 1954 by a landmine. He left a legacy of being possibly one of the greatest war photographers in the world; he was one of the first to take a camera to war and immerse himself into the assignments he was on.
The image shown on this page, is one of my favorite photos from Robert Capa because it really shows you the depth and emotion of the defeated German soldier. It also gives you a good insight into what his work looks like and was. Also something to mention, is that as a photographer in this time period, he had only a film camera with a 35mm lens. This meant he had to be actually, very close to conflict and people in order to get shots like this one.
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