Founder of military photojournalism Robert Capa: biography, creativity and interesting facts

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

For 40 years, he has done a lot. He traveled the whole planet, made friends with the most famous writers and intellectuals of his time, for example, Hemingway and Steinbeck, visited five wars, became the founder of a whole genre - military photojournalism.

At the same time, he was known as a womanizer, a reveler and a drunkard, survived the death of his beloved woman and girlfriend in the war, almost married the most beautiful woman on the planet - a movie superstar - and died on the battlefield the death of an ordinary soldier. Considering that Robert Capa did not exist as a person for a long time, but was a well-thought-out hoax, one can take such a biography as a screenplay for a film that is quite worthy of an Oscar.

He has a great future

When a boy was born in 1913 in the family of the owners of a fashion studio in the center of Budapest, Dejo and Julia Friedman, they were sure that he would be an extraordinary person who would succeed in life. They saw one of the signs of this in a small sign from above - the baby had an extra finger on his hand, which they carefully removed without anyconsequences for the he alth and appearance of the boy. The offspring was named Andre Erno, although after a while he received a nickname similar to a criminal nickname and for some time became his name - Bundy. It is clear that this Jewish boy from a decent family was distinguished by a violent temperament, a lively mind and an aversion to a quiet, calm life.

The 30s have arrived. Hungary became one of the countries where the Nazis came to power, and Bandy immediately got involved in a protest movement against the Horthy regime. After being arrested and persecuted by the police, he leaves Hungary and in 1931 enters the University of Berlin at the Faculty of Journalism. But there was no money to continue his studies, and Bundy got a job at the Die Foto photo agency. The energy and sociability of the young man did not go unnoticed, and soon they began to entrust him with shooting important political events, which at that turbulent time were enough throughout Europe.

First success

Speaking in December 1932 in Copenhagen, Leon Trotsky, expelled from the country by Stalin and fearing assassination attempts, forbade any photography. But the young photographer Andre Friedman managed to take some pictures that were published by many leading European publications. This was the first real success of the novice photojournalist. He begins to define the basic principles of his profession, the main one of which he will voice later, already as Robert Capa: “If your pictures are not very good, then you were not close enough!”

He himself was in 1933 in the very center of events, in the center of the cauldron, inwhich brewed the future tragedy of the largest world war: the Nazis came to power in Germany. It became dangerous for a Jewish photojournalist with leftist views to be in Berlin, and he moves to France, to Paris. There, in 1935, as he himself later joked, "at the age of 22," the future founder of military photojournalism, Robert Capa, was born. Andre Friedman can be considered a "father", but he had, as expected, a "mother".

Gerda Taro

Their meeting was pure coincidence. When Andre invited one pretty girl as a model, who, like him, had fled from the Nazis, she, having a fiancé and knowing about the reputation of a handsome photographer, took her friend with her. She was a German Jewish woman with Polish roots, and her name was Gerda Pogorilaya. The honor of the fashion model did not suffer, but Gerda could not resist the charms of the Don Juan. It turned out that they are colleagues, and Gerda, like Andre, is trying to make a living photojournalism. Andre's career was hampered by poor knowledge of French and the presence in Paris of another photojournalist named Friedman. Soon, they work together to develop a chic marketing ploy.

The essence of their hoax was, as expected, simple and brilliant. Instead of unknown Jewish photojournalists, with whom no reputable publication wants to deal, a famous and charming photographer from distant America should appear, where his photographs are in great demand from the most influential newspapers and magazines, and a special agent, part-time, deals with his affairs.also a photojournalist, a young girl of leftist convictions. Soon surprisingly topical and sharp, often scandalous photo reports began to appear in the Parisian press, signed by the colorful name of Robert Capa. Negotiations with the editors were conducted by his manager, Gerda Taro, who also sometimes sent her works. Young people opened a photo agency, which gained great fame, where the mythical American was the co-owner, and Taro was his secretary and manager.

War in Spain

The hoax was revealed when they, having moved to New York, tried to pass off the owner of their photo agency as a famous Frenchman. But he was already truly famous, and since then Robert Capa has gained flesh and blood and a rather impressive appearance. To cover the outbreak of the civil war in Spain, Robert and Gerda went as well-known photographers, with names that did not need advertising and hoaxes. In addition to their professional interest, they were called to the fields of the beginning struggle against fascism by a very definite sympathy for the left, socialist ideas, which distinguished many thinking people around the world at that time.

The first war that Robert Capa filmed was also the first experience for him, during which he worked out methods for obtaining photographs that had not only documentary accuracy, but also high emotionality and great impact on the audience. His photographs have always been distinguished by an undisguised personal attitude to what is happening - sympathy and respect for some characters, contempt and disgust for others. Personal courage and energy allowed Capa to take pictures smelling of gunpowder andsounding like shells, and luck and artistic inclinations make them unforgettable and impressive documents of history.

The most famous shot

September 5, 1936, Capa was in the trenches of the Republicans in the Sierra Morena mountain range. The mood of the fighters who opposed the Francoists was unimportant. Loyalists, that is, supporters of the Republic, who defended the legitimate government from the rebels of General Franco, knew that their enemy received new German machine guns, which made it possible to fire with unprecedented intensity.

Later, Capa recalled that when the command of the loyalist commander to launch an attack followed, and the fighters began to rise from shelters, loud automatic bursts were heard. The photographer realized his "Leica" over the trench and blindly pulled the trigger. When the negative sent by Capa to the agency was developed, a photograph was published in many publications, which was later called the most famous photograph in the world taken during the hostilities. Various testimonies and studies appeared that spoke about the staged nature of the picture, about the immorality of the staging undertaken by Capa. Disputes do not stop until now, but this does not change the essence of the picture taken by photographer Robert Capa: the everyday life of the moment of death, captured by the camera, shows the most terrible - anti-human - unnaturalness of war.

Loss

In the summer of 1937, in the retreating column of the Republicans, near the Madrid suburb of Brunete, a tank accidentally crushed a truck with the wounded. In himthere was a friend and colleague of Capa - Gerda Taro. The next day, July 26, she died from her injuries. The loss had a profound effect on Robert. His friends recalled that he really could not recover from this until the very end. Now he had to work alone in the agency born of their joint plan, but most importantly, he lost his beloved girlfriend, with whom, according to some reports, he was going to find family happiness.

He goes to the next war alone. The photographs taken by Capa in China, when the invasion of the Japanese army began in 1938, introduced Europeans and Americans not only to an exotic region of the Earth for many, but also served as a formidable omen that the flames of world war were flaring up with renewed vigor, and it would not be possible to stay away. no one will succeed.

World War II

The peculiarity of American citizenship law led in 1940 to a paradoxical situation with the already famous photojournalist. Formally, Capa remained a citizen of Hungary - an ally of Nazi Germany and an opponent of the anti-Hitler coalition. At the same time, throughout the war, he was an official employee of the most influential American magazine LIFE. In this capacity, he participated in the most bloody operation of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe - the landing of allied forces in Normandy.

Subsequently, in the famous book "The Hidden Perspective" by Robert Capa, a truthful and terrible description was posted on June 6, 1944,carried out by him in the region of the sector of the Normandy coast, indicated on American military maps as the sector of Omaha Beach. He was the only journalist in the most dangerous American landing site. He was exposed to terrible risks every second, advancing along with ordinary soldiers under terrible fire, which the Germans conducted from the heights hanging over the shore.

Kapa shot several cassettes of film, managing to save them from bullets, shrapnel and falling into the water. Then a real shock awaited him: due to the oversight of a laboratory assistant who showed materials sent by Capa from Normandy in the editorial office of Life magazine in London, almost all of the footage was lost. Only 11 frames survived, which had various technical defects. Unexpectedly, the fuzziness, blurring, spots contained in them gave the photographs such expressiveness that they bypassed all the world's leading media and became classics of photography.

Magnum Agency

The post-war fame of the most famous newsreel in the United States did not change the way of life of Robert Capa. He was friends with artists and writers, fell head over heels in movie stars. The most famous diva of the time - the amazing Ingrid Bergman - was ready to marry him if he stopped traveling on his business trips to war zones. As a result, they broke up.

In 1947, the Magnum photo agency was founded, headed by Robert Capa. The classics of photography - Henri Cartier-Beresson, David Seymour, George Roger - who joined him, had the goal of creatingthe leading association of documentary photographers capable of describing events anywhere in the world with the necessary quality and speed. This goal was achieved despite the difficult times the agency went through.

Wars after the war

Robert Capa, biography, photographs, whose books are full of terrible materials from the fields of military battles, he also liked to shoot peaceful life, finding stories that became classics. In 1949, he made a trip to the USSR, which was an attempt to slightly open the falling "Iron Curtain" from the outside.

But military photojournalism remained the main occupation. Capa continued to drive to where the shots rang out. In 1948, he covers the events of the war declared by the Arab states on the new state of Israel.

The last photo of reporter Robert Capa was taken on May 25, 1954 in Indochina. It shows how American soldiers carefully wander, bypassing the section of the highway that is under fire. In a moment, an anti-personnel mine will explode, ending the life of a famous photojournalist.