Capa, whose person embodied the prototype of the modern war press photographer, and whose work would take its place among the most prominent exemplars of war reportage, began his career in an extraordinary time period that launched the careers of many photographers of Hungarian origin. Capa’s career is virtually coeval with modern photo journalism.
In the words of Richard Whelan (also Capa’s first biographer as well as the foremost researcher of his life story): “The precocious Budapest teenager who would eventually become known to the world as Robert Capa did not aspire to be a photographer. He wanted to be a writer – a reporter and a novelist.”
Capa’s evolution into a press photographer and war reporter (all the while entertaining the idea of filmmaking) was fundamentally determined by history, as well as by factors like accelerated technical developments in photography, the increasingly refined techniques and strategies of photographers, and the changes in the printed picture press in the 1920s as a result of the influence of motion pictures. In the words of August Scherl, press tycoon and owner of the weekly Die Woche: “The main purpose of the illustrated magazine was no longer to illustrate the text, but to allow events to be seen directly in pictures, to render the world comprehensible through the photograph.”
Capa distinguished himself among the ranks of war reporters who thought – with the visual appearance of magazine pages already in mind – in series of images that rolled like film footage, and who had the courage and the ability to “get in close” and show aspects of war and fighting on the front lines in a form that had hitherto been impossible, partly due to technological limitations and partly because of the restrictions of censorship.
Capa worked for a number of US and European agencies; his photo reports appeared in the columns of such publications as Vu, Regards, Ce Soir, Life, Picture Post, Collier’s, and Illustrated. At the same time, in addition to his work as photo correspondent, being one of the founders of the Magnum photo agency (1974), educating and supporting young photographers were of primary importance to him.
Following his death in 1954, his brother Cornell Capa, in addition to his own work as press photographer, strove to preserve and introduce to the world the oeuvre of his brother and his colleagues. As a first step, he expanded the International Fund for Concerned Photography, which he had co-founded with others in 1956. Then, in 1974, he established the International Center of Photography (ICP) -, one of the world’s most prominent institutions of photography, simultaneously a museum, a school and an archive – with himself as director.
Between 1990 and 1992, Cornell Capa and Richard Whelan looked through Capa’s more than seventy thousand photographs and chose 937 of them – the most outstanding photographs of his oeuvre from 1932 to 1954 – to represent the cornerstones of his life’s work and his career as a press photographer.2
In 1995, from the 937 negatives that had been selected, three identical series of excellent quality were produced using traditional photographic technique. These consisted of 40 x 50cm enlargements marked with Robert Capa’s embossed seal. It was determined that no additional series could be made after this time. Of the three series, one remained in New York, the second one found a home in the Fuji Museum of Tokyo, and the third set was purchased by the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and added to the Historical Photo Collection of the Hungarian National Museum.
Besides the 937 photographs that constitute what is known as the “Definitive Collection” (Master Selection), the Hungarian National Museum also acquired 48 original Robert Capa positives (vintage) copies dating back to the same time.
Furthermore, in complement to the purchased material, the ICP donated 20 enlargements – whose originals were included in the collection, but, as a result of their key importance, were blown up to a larger size – as well as five portraits of Robert Capa. It is this collection, comprised of 1010 photographs, which was featured by the exhibition at the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art.
The Dunaújváros exhibition – given the specifications of the space – offers a smaller selection from the material featured at the Ludwig Museum last summer. Groups of photographs selected from the “Definitive Collection” follow the key stages of Robert Capa’s carrier as war correspondent through highlighted themes of his oeuvre, but, in this case, not in chronological order.
The exhibition starts off with his first serious assignment in Berlin (the series on the speech given by the exiled Lev Trotsky in Copenhagen in 1932) and continues with the most defining period of the oeuvre, a three-year interval (1936-1939) spent photographing the Spanish Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which Endre Friedmann / André Friedmann became Robert Capa, the most famous war press photographer in the world. The same space also houses Capa’s post-world war work, his reports on the establishment of the State of Israel, the associated conflicts, the immigrants and the refugees.
A separate section is devoted to the photographic documents of his social life, which became inextricably intertwined with his work as press photographer. Ever the bohemian, he never gave up his way of living – not even at the battlefront, as evidenced by the shots that capture some of his peaceful and cheerful moments spent there. His portraits which were taken in parallel with his war reports capture people that were important to him – colleagues, friends and lovers – as well as many prominent figures of the era, including Pablo Picasso, Ingrid Bergman, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway.
In the second exhibition hall, visitors see the seats of world war operations: photographs capturing the North African, Southern Italian and Sicilian fronts, as well as the Normandy Landing on June 6, 1944. The “D-Day” series – which also served as inspiration to film director Steven Spielberg – is followed by images documenting the denigration of the French women who had collaborated with the Germans and the liberation of Paris. The exhibition also features a few photographs of Capa’s 1948-1949 trip around Eastern Europe, including some Budapest shots.
The Hungarian audience had very few opportunities for coming across foreign newspapers and magazines featuring Robert Capa’s powerful reports, which made headlines all around the world. For this reason, in conjunction with the different subjects, a few of these publications are presented for viewing at the exhibition. The reportages, which were also defining in terms of Capa’s career, show how – in what context – English, French and American readers may have seen his war photographs.
In the third gallery space, Anne Makepeace’s 2003 documentary Robert Capa: In Love and War is shown with Hungarian subtitles.
The publication accompanying the exhibition – in the interest of providing an easier overview – employs a chronological order and also features thematic texts that are either not presented at the exhibition or appear with very little photographic material.
Livia Páldi