Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Photographs by Robert Capa Robert Capa and the Spanish Civil War. By the end of the Spanish Civil war in 1939 the socio-political landscape of Europe had not only altered, but the practice of war photography had also experienced some pivotal moments. The photographs taken by Robert Capa – before he went on to co-found Magnum – and his partner captured the brutal realities of combat. Photographic coverage of the Spanish Civil War was an emotional investment for Capa; ideologically, he sympathized with the plight of the anti-fascist Republicans, consisting of the workers, the trade unions, socialists and the poor. But Capa’s heart was also invested in his coverage for other reasons, with his partner Gerda Taro by his side for much of his time there. Their photographs became the enduring images of the Spanish Civil War. In an era when French publications usually gave no credit at all to photographers, French magazine Regards published Capa’s early images from his initial trip to Madrid proudly stating that it “sent one of its most qualified and audacious photographers to the Spanish capital”. In 1938 Picture Post introduced him, with his Spanish Civil War work, as “the greatest war photographer in the world”. “The horrific tendency of modern warfare is to depersonalize. Soldiers can use their weapons of mass destruction only because they have learned to conceptualize their victims not as individuals but as a category – the enemy. Capa’s strategy was to re personalize war – to emphasize that those who suffer the effects of war are individuals with whom the viewer of the photographs cannot help but identify.” – Richard Whelan, “Robert Capa in Spain”, in Heart of Spain , published by Aperture. A New Identity. Before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Capa, then going by his real Hungarian name of André Friedmann, was a jobbing photographer in Paris, not earning a fabulous amount of money. His girlfriend Gerta Pohorylle came up with the character of ‘Robert Capa’, whom they would would tell potential clients was an esteemed American photographer. Pohorylle successfully convinced Parisian editors that it would be insulting to his reputation to buy his photographer for less than 150 francs each. It also allowed him to forge his own identity away from another working Parisian photographer of the time whose surname was also Friedmann. “I am working under a new name. They call me Robert Capa. One could almost say that I’ve been born again, but this time it didn’t cause anyone any pain,” wrote Capa in a letter to his mother. At the same time Gerta Pohorylle took on the surname Taro, after a Japanese painter living in Paris. Capa’s biographer Richard Whelan wrote of how the two men – André Friedmann and Robert Capa – represented two sides of Capa: who he was and who he aspired to be. One “long-haired, unkept and unshaven Gypsy” and one “glamorous American” who his mother and Gerda – a woman who “sometimes called her lover André and sometimes Capa… as though they had a ménage à trois” wanted him to be. With his newly acquired – or invented – reputation, Capa was now earning enough to fund his travels more independently. It was a ploy that afforded them both the cachet and the freedom to traverse Spain to document the Spanish Civil War. . The most iconic image of the Spanish Civil War – and indeed of Capa’s career – is the photograph of a Spanish Republican militiaman falling down wounded on the Córdoba front line. “The photograph is an overwhelmingly powerful statement of the human existential dilemma, as the solitary man is struck down by an unseen enemy, as if by Fate itself…the photograph is a haunting symbol of all the Republican soldiers who died in the war, and of Republican Spain itself, flinging itself bravely forward and being struck down.” – Richard Whelan, “Robert Capa in Spain”, in Heart of Spain , published by Aperture. Tragedy for Gerda. In July 1938, after Capa had returned to Paris, Gerda Taro stayed in Madrid. On hearing about a fierce battle that had just launched toward Brunete, west of Madrid, she headed out to document it. The battle was bloodier than any previously, and on the evening of July 25, during the confusion of a retreat, Taro jumped onto the running board of a general’s car to reach safety, but as an out-of-control tank crashed into it, Taro was crushed and died the next day. It is believed that she was the first female photojournalist to die in combat. A radical communist once interrogated by the Nazis over an alleged Bolshevik plot to overthrow Hitler, Taro was given a funeral in Paris by the Communist Network she had been involved with since her arrival in the city. Capa was inconsolable about Taro’s death when he heard the news. In the preface to the book , dedicated to Taro, he wrote of Gerda “who spent one year at the Spanish front, and who stayed on.” Capa himself would then suffer a similar fate less than two decades later, killed by a landmine during the First Indochina War. Robert Capa. On 3, December 1938 Picture Post introduced The Greatest War Photographer in the World: Robert Capa with a spread of 26 photographs taken during the Spanish Civil War. But the “greatest war photographer” hated war. Born Andre Friedmann to Jewish parents in Budapest in 1913, he studied political science at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Berlin. Driven out of the country by the threat of a Nazi regime, he settled in Paris in 1933. He was represented by Alliance Photo and met the journalist and photographer Gerda Taro. Together, they invented the ‘famous’ American photographer Robert Capa and began to sell his prints under that name. He met Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway and formed friendships with fellow photographers David ‘Chim’ Seymour and Henri Cartier-Bresson. From 1936 onwards, Capa’s coverage of the Spanish Civil War appeared regularly. His picture of a Loyalist soldier who had just been fatally wounded earned him his international reputation and became a powerful symbol of war. After his companion, Gerda Taro, was killed in Spain, Capa travelled to China in 1938 and emigrated to New York a year later. As a correspondent in Europe, he photographed the Second World War, covering the landing of American troops on Omaha Beach on D-Day, the liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge. In 1947, Capa founded with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert. On 25 May 1954, he was photographing for Life in Thai-Binh, Indochina, when he stepped on a landmine and was killed. The French Army awarded him the Croix de Guerre with Palm post-humously. The Robert Capa Gold Medal Award was established in 1955 to reward exceptional professional merit. Robert Capa. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Robert Capa , original name (Hungarian form) Friedmann Endre Ernő , (born 1913, Budapest, Hungary—died May 25, 1954, Thai Binh, ), photographer whose images of war made him one of the greatest photojournalists of the 20th century. In 1931 and 1932 Capa worked for Dephot, a German picture agency, before establishing himself in Paris, where he assumed the name Robert Capa. He first achieved fame as a war correspondent in the Spanish Civil War. By 1936 his mature style fully emerged in grim, close-up views of death such as Loyalist Soldier, Spain . Such immediate images embodied Capa’s famous saying, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, then you aren’t close enough.” In World War II he covered much of the heaviest fighting in Africa, Sicily, and Italy for Life magazine, and his photographs of the Normandy Invasion became some of the most memorable of the war. After being sworn in as a United States citizen in 1946, Capa in 1947 joined with the photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and David (“Chim”) Seymour to found Magnum Photos, the first cooperative agency of international freelance photographers. Although he covered the fighting in Palestine in 1948, most of Capa’s time was spent guiding newer members of Magnum and selling their work. He served as the director of the Magnum office in Paris from 1950 to 1953. In 1954 Capa volunteered to photograph the French Indochina War for Life and was killed by a land mine while on assignment. His untimely death helped establish his posthumous reputation as a quintessentially fearless photojournalist. Publications featuring his photographs include Death in the Making (1937), Slightly Out of Focus (1947), Images of War (1964), Children of War, Children of Peace (1991), and Robert Capa: Photographs (1996). This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager. WWII photographer Robert Capa: Debunking the myth. Capa's images of US forces invading Normandy on D-Day went around the world. But the photojournalist's story has been challenged. Robert Capa's famous D-day photo: 'Soldier in the Surf' Blurred and out of focus, the 11 photos Robert Capa took off the coast of Normandy, France on June 6, 1944 secured his reputation as the most famous war photographer. Seventy-five years after the end of World War II, the images of what would become commonly known as D-Day remain globally iconic. Capa was the only photographer to go ashore with US troops as they invaded a stretch of coast in northwest France. He photographed the soldiers from behind as they stormed "Omaha Beach," the American military code name for the beach segment, defended by German troops. Other images, such as "The Soldier in the Surf" (above), show soldiers up to their necks in water or taking cover. It was a daring and courageous operation, but in recent times questions have emerged as to how the photos came about, consequently casting a shadow on Capa's reputation as a war photographer. 'If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough' Capa's career began during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), when he photographed the Republican troops fighting the forces of General Francisco Franco, a Hitler ally. Together with his partner Gerda Taro, Capa established a new style of photojournalism that used small portable cameras to get as close to the action as possible. "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Capa is famously quoted as saying. Taro was killed in 1937 while working on the frontlines in Spain. They knew each other from the Spanish Civil War: Capa (l) and Ernest Hemingway (r) accompanying US troops in France in July 1944. From Europe to the United States. Capa was born Endre Friedmann into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1913. He moved to Berlin as a young man and later headed to Paris to escape the Nazis. There, he began to use the alias Robert Capa and started traveling to Spain for work. In 1939, he entered the US on a tourist visa and was able to secure freelance commissions by using his contacts among journalists, photographers and authors. Capa was not the only war photographer to document WWII, but he was considered particularly courageous and ambitious, even among the Allied troops. In his 1947 memoir, Slightly out of Focus , he presents a highly fictionalized account of his work during World War II, his fears and his motivation. Capa was after exclusive photos and he absolutely wanted to be on-site during the Allied invasion. Despite his Hungarian citizenship — Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany — the US military added him to the small group of reporters allowed to be present for the planned D-Day. Exclusive rolls of film: From Omaha Beach to editors in New York. It wasn't just important that the 30-year-old photographer survive the D-Day mission; he also had to meet his editorial deadline. The rolls of film had to be transported from the French coast across the English Channel to London, where they would be developed. The military censor had to give the okay and then an airplane at the ready would fly the negatives across the Atlantic to the New York offices of Life , the magazine where Capa worked. Texts would also be written to accompany the images. Meanwhile, the photographer stayed behind with the advancing Allied troops. Robert Capa's D-Day photos are regularly on show at exhibitions. Capa's D-Day photos are not only some of the most famous images of World War II; at the time, they also played a major role in cementing his reputation as a war photographer. Prior to D-Day, he had already photographed the fighting in North Africa and the Allied advance in Italy, among other things. In 1947, US General Dwight D. Eisenhower presented Capa and 19 other correspondents with the Medal of Freedom, which honored civilians who aided the US effort in WWII. The defeat of Nazi Germany and post-war life in Berlin. Capa photographed in March 1945 US paratroopers landing on Nazi Germany. Capa witnessed the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944, from a military jeep. In March 1945, he jumped from a plane with US paratroopers, landing behind the enemy line near the German town of Wesel. Capa did not photograph the Battle of Berlin. "There was one story Capa did want to cover — the liberation of Leipzig," Alex Kershaw noted in his 2002 biography Blood and Champagne — The Life and Times of Robert Capa . It wasn't until after the war had ended in summer 1945 that Capa came to Berlin, where he took photos of the liberated city and its people. He also met and fell in love with Swedish Hollywood star . Their love affair ended in early 1947. What really happened at Omaha Beach? The legend around Robert Capa, war photographer, has repeatedly been challenged. In 2014, author Allan Douglas Coleman launched a blog where he and others try to reconstruct the events of D-Day. Their research casts doubt on the long-recounted story of how the D-Day images came about. The criticism, in a nutshell, is that Capa was on Omaha Beach later than previously reported, when the worst of the fighting was already over, and that he did not stay as long as previously assumed. The total number of photos he shot is also contested, with Capa supposedly taking far fewer photos than he said he did, perhaps not even more than the 11 famous photos. The Life editorial team claim that a London lab technician accidentally destroyed the other negatives by heat is disputed as being technically impossible. So did Capa take only those 11 iconic D-Day photos? The former Life editor John Morris, who was responsible for the publication of Capa's Normandy photos in 1944, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in 2014 that it appears the destroyed rolls of film did not contain any negatives. "It now seems that maybe there was nothing on the other three rolls to begin with. Experts recently have said you can't melt the emulsion off films like that and he just never shot them," Morris said. "I now believe that it's quite possible that Bob just bundled all his 35 [millimeter film rolls] together and just shipped it off back to London, knowing that on one of those rolls there would be the pictures he actually shot that morning." Irme Schaber, biographer of Capa's partner Taro and curator of the first Gerda Taro exhibition with the International Center of Photography in 2007, said it is "not unthinkable that Capa embellished the potentially meager yield of Omaha Beach with curious stories designed to distract and draw attention. He knew no scruples about such things, this is known. The straightforward military aspect was also never very important to Capa. For him, it was first and foremost about the human aspect." Debate about 'The Falling Soldier' Doubt was already being cast on another famous Capa photo as early as the 1970s. Known as "The Falling Soldier," the image from the Spanish Civil War allegedly depicts a Republican soldier at the moment of death. Today, it remains unclear whether the image is authentic or staged. What is certain is that Capa and Taro did not see themselves as uninvolved observers of the Spanish Civil War but rather stood on the side of the Republican troops and their allies against Franco. 'The Falling Soldier': Many questions surrounding the iconic shot remain unanswered. "The photo of 'Falling Soldier' is a lesson in media history that raises questions far beyond Capa the photographer," Schaber said. "The ongoing debate is necessary and exciting, and it ensures that this early iconic photograph will be carried onward in an instructional manner into the digital age." Both the D-Day photos and "The Falling Solider" show that the question of truth in war is particularly serious, she added. Reconstructing the hours of June 6, 1944, on Omaha Beach is a difficult and ongoing process. For instance, the identity of the man in Capa's photo "The Soldier in the Surf" remains unknown to this day. Both Edward Regan and Huston Riley claim to recognize themselves in the shot. Schaber, who herself has extensively researched Taro, maintains that photo and military historical research are still necessary and important. Robert Capa: 'Great artist and photographer' As far as Kershaw is concerned, the critical questions surrounding the images' origins don't change a thing. "They are the best images of D-Day and were real. They are amazing," Kershaw told DW. Capa's standing as one of the most famous war photographers also remains immutable, he added. "He was a great artist and photographer. A rock star, a great reporter." Robert Capa at the Indochina War in 1954. After World War II, Capa and his colleagues Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour (Chim) and George Rodger founded the Magnum photo agency, still considered one of the most renowned today. Capa photographed two more wars: the first Arab-Israeli War following the founding of the state of in 1948 — an assignment that was very important to him — and the First Indochina War (1946-54). Capa supposedly always carefully decided which wars he was willing to risk his life for and which wars he wasn't. He actually did not want to go to Indochina, an area of French colonial possession in present-day Vietnam. The question as to why he went in the end remains emotionally charged, Kershaw wrote. One possibility is that he missed that kind of work. A gambler, Capa desperately also needed money. Or maybe he wanted to renew his reputation as a war photographer, another theory supposes. Capa's war photography went beyond the battles: Two women and a child weeping during the First Indochina War, 1954. 'Was the risk worth it?' On May 25, 1954, the 40-year-old was accompanying a French unit in action against communist Viet Minh soldiers. He walked a bit into a field, where he stepped on a landmine and was fatally injured. He reportedly clung to his camera. If Kershaw could speak to Capa today, he would have two questions for him: "Was the risk worth it? Dying at 40?" He would also like to know: "What was it like having Ingrid Bergmann be madly in love with you?" The Photography of Robert Capa. Robert Capa (1913-1954) was the preeminent war photographer of his time and one of its most magnetic figures. It is entirely apt that this Hungarian emigre, Endre Friedmann, conspired in the ‘30s to create the dashing persona of Robert Capa, and then expanded on it until Robert Capa was bigger than life—at the Spanish Civil War, in China covering the fight against Japan, with U.S. troops in North Africa and Italy, and on a terrible Normandy beach on D-Day. All this from a man who hated war: “A war photographer’s most fervent wish is for unemployment.” But there is always one more war. After serving as LIFE staff photographer from 1944 to 1946, Capa went on to co-found Magnum Photos in 1947. In 1954 he was in Japan with a Magnum exhibition when LIFE needed a photographer in Indochina. Robert Capa, of course, volunteered, but he would be killed there on assignment after stepping on a landmine. Said his brother, photographer : “He died on a not-important road, in a not-important action. It had to be fate for him to do that.” He died with his camera in his hands. Robert Capa wearing parachute and gear prior to jumping in with troops during WWII. (Photo by Robert Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Capa was with the first wave of Allied soldiers to hit Omaha Beach on D-Day. He shot four rolls of film. A photo assistant, however, ruined all but 11 images. Fortunately, the handful that survived were more than enough to limn the massive assault. Capa shared the fears and fatigue of the men he accompanied. During one campaign, he just kept repeating to himself, “I want to walk in the California sunshine and wear white shoes and white trousers.” Robert Kirkland playing a game of basketball. (Photo by Robert Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Actress Tallulah Bankhead attending the Barter Theatre auditions with director Robert Porterfield. (Photo by Robert Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)