Journalist+Biography

Robert Capa 1913-1954

World-famous combat photojournalist. Firm in his belief that “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough,” Capa put himself in the middle of the action. His photographs of soldiers in the trenches during the Spanish civil war made him famous around the world. Later assignments involved landing in France with the first wave of D-Day forces and jumping with paratroopers into Germany during World War II. Capa lost his life in the field, killed by a mine while on assignment in Vietnam. []

Robert Capa was somewhat careless as a photographer but was carefully dedicated as a man. He participated with courage in almost every great tragedy of his time, and never lost heart nor faith. He was incredibly quick to guess the truth. Knowing the truth, he took risks, risks which were never calculated to hurt anyone but himself. Like most he had faults, but his faults were invariably charming and his virtues never boring. He dressed well, ate well, and picked up the check. He drank frequently, but never to get drunk. And then he went home, to a hotel room. He was at home in any major city of the world, and slightly uncomfortable in the country. On June 6, 1944, an assault barge landed Robert Capa on Omaha Beach. Stumbling ashore under heavy fire, he exposed four rolls of the most famous films in history. As luck would have it, all but eleven frames were ruined in Life’s London darkroom when the emulsion ran in an over-heated drying cabinet. However, Life, and the world press, published the surviving images, calling them "slightly out of focus" from the blurred emulsion. And Capa maintained his dangerous franchise as the most colorful war photographer. He was to see the war through to its bitter end, actually photographing the death of one of the last Americans killed. But he missed the Armistice, when, in a rare case of misjudgment, he pooh-poohed the tip that would have given him an exclusive. Capa wanted no more war, but he could not resist covering the birth of Israel in 1949 with Irwin Shaw. By this time he had also participated, with his old friends Henri Cartier-Bresson, David ("Chim") Seymour, George Rodger, and William Vandivert in the birth of Magnum Photos, the first and still the only international cooperative agency of free lance photographers. This marked a new development in Capa’s career. He became an international businessman, selling and stimulating the work of Magnum photographers as the group grew to include Werner Bischof, Ernst Haas, and many others. With John Steinbeck he went to Russia in 1947, returning with a memorable story for the Ladies’ Home Journal. Also for the Journal, the Magnum group did a series on international family life called "People Are People the World Over," a photographic forerunner of the "Family of Man." Capa began to think of his future in terms of writing combined with photography and wrote several charming pieces for Holiday. He already had four books to his credit: "Death in the Making" on the Spanish Civil War, "Waterloo Bridge" on the London Blitz, "A Russian Journal," with Steinbeck narrative, and "Slightly Out of Focus" on World War II (sold to Hollywood but never filmed). His literary style was his own: "To me war is like an aging actress—more and more dangerous and less and less photogenic." In 1954 Capa went to Japan with a Magnum exhibition. While he was there, Life suddenly needed a photographer on the Indochina front. Capa volunteered. But it was one war too many. His luck ran out on May 25. They found him still clutching his camera.

His funeral was held in the old Quaker meeting house at Purchase, New York. In his memory the Overseas Press Club established the Robert Capa Award "for superlative photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad." []

(P.S. Utalized Cody Miller's profile to edit mine b/c my computer would not allow me to do so effectively. -Josh Thompson)