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, with Hemingway and Steinbeck, visited five wars, became the founder of the 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. Given that Robert Kapa 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 script for a film quite worthy of an Oscar.
A great future awaits him!
When a boy was born in the family of the owners of a fashion studio in the center of Budapest, Dejo and Julia Friedman, they were sure that this would be an extraordinary person who would succeed in life. One of the signs of this they saw in a small sign from above - the baby had an extra finger on his hand, which he carefully removed without any consequences for the boy’s health and appearance. The offspring was named Andre Erno, although after a while he received a nickname similar to the criminal nickname and which became his name for a while - Bundy. It is clear that this Jewish boy from a decent family was distinguished by his violent temperament, a lively mind and an aversion to a quiet, calm life.
The 30s have come. Hungary became one of the countries where the Nazis came to power, and Bundy immediately got involved in a protest movement against the Horthy regime. After the arrest and prosecution of the police, he leaves Hungary and in 1931 enters the Faculty of Journalism at the University of Berlin. 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 the shooting of important political events, which at that time were stormy throughout Europe.
First success
Speaking in Copenhagen in December 1932, Leon Trotsky, expelled by Stalin from the country and fearing assassination attempts, forbade any photography. But the young photographer Andre Friedman managed to take some pictures, which were published by many leading European publications. This was the first real success of a beginner photojournalist. He begins to determine the basic principles of his profession, the main of which he will voice later, already as Robert Kapa: “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 boiler, in which the future tragedy of the largest world war was brewed: the Nazis came to power in Germany. A Jewish left-wing photojournalist in Berlin became life-threatening, and he moved 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, is born”. Andre Friedman can be considered the "father", but he had, as expected, a "mother."
Gerda Tarot
Their meeting was a coincidence. When Andre invited a pretty girl as a model, just like he, who was fleeing the Nazis, she, having a groom and knowing the reputation of a handsome photographer, took a girlfriend with her. She was a German Jewess with Polish roots, and her name was Gerda Pogorilaya. The honor of the 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 by photojournalism. Andre's career was hindered by poor knowledge of French and the presence in Paris of another photojournalist named Friedman. Soon, together, they develop a chic marketing move.
The essence of their mystification was, as expected, simple and ingenious. Instead of the well-known Jewish photojournalists, which no reputable publication wants to deal with, a famous and charming photographer from distant America should appear, where his photographs are snapped up by the most influential newspapers and magazines, and a special agent is engaged in his affairs, part-time as well photojournalist, young girl of left-wing beliefs. Soon in the Paris press began to appear surprisingly topical and sharp, often scandalous photo reports, 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 won great fame, where the mythical American was a co-owner, and Taro was his secretary and manager.
War in spain
The hoax opened 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 pretty impressive appearance. Robert and Gerda traveled to cover the outbreak of the civil war in Spain as well-known photographers, with names that did not need advertising and hoaxes. In addition to professional interest, a definite sympathy for the left, socialist ideas called them to the fields of the beginning struggle against fascism, which distinguished at that time many thinking people around the world.
The first war, which was shot by Robert Capa, became for him the first experience, during which he worked out methods for obtaining photographs that possessed not only documentary accuracy, but also high emotionality and tremendous power of influence on the audience. His pictures have always been distinguished by an undisguised personal attitude to what is happening - sympathy and respect for some characters, contempt and aversion to others. Personal courage and energy allowed Capa to take pictures that smelled of gunpowder and sounding like bursting shells, and luck and artistic inclinations made them unforgettable and impressive documents of history.
The most famous shot
On September 5, 1936, Capa was in the trenches of the Republicans in the Sierra Morena mountain range. The mood of the fighters opposing the Franco was unimportant. Loyalists, that is, supporters of the republic who defended legal power from the rebels of General Franco, knew that their adversary received new German assault rifles that allowed firing with unprecedented intensity.
Subsequently, Capa recalled that when the command of the loyalist commander followed, to launch the attack, and the soldiers began to rise from the shelters, loud automatic bursts sounded. The photographer understood his "Watering Can" above the trench and blindly pressed the trigger. When the negative sent by Kapa to the agency was revealed, a picture was published in many publications, later called the most famous photograph in the world taken during the fighting. Various evidences and studies appeared that spoke of the staged nature of the picture, of the immorality of the staging undertaken by Kapa. Disputes do not stop until now, but the essence of the picture taken by photographer Robert Kapa does not change: the ordinaryness 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 a retreating convoy of Republicans, near the Brunete suburb of Madrid, the tank accidentally crushed a truck with the wounded. There was a friend and ally of Capa - Gerda Taro. The next day - July 26 - she died from her injuries. The loss greatly affected Robert. His friends recalled that he really could not recover from this to the very end. Now he had to work alone in an agency born of their joint plan, but most importantly, he lost his beloved girlfriend, with whom, according to some information, was going to find family happiness.
He goes alone to the next war. The photographs taken by Kapa 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 not to stay away nobody will succeed.
WWII
The peculiarity of American legislation on obtaining citizenship led in 1940 to a paradoxical situation with the already famous photojournalist. Formally, Kapa remained a citizen of Hungary - an ally of fascist Germany and an adversary of the anti-Hitler coalition. However, throughout the war he was an official employee of the influential American magazine LIFE. In this capacity, he participated in the most bloody operation of the American expeditionary forces in Europe - in the landing of the allied forces in Normandy.
Subsequently, in the famous book “Hidden Perspective” by Robert Kapa, a truthful and terrible frankness was published on June 6, 1944, which he spent in the area of the Norman coast sector, designated on the US military maps as the Omaha Beach sector. He turned out to be the only journalist in the most dangerous place of the American landing. He was at terrible risk every second, moving along with ordinary soldiers under the terrible fire that the Germans fought from overhanging heights above the coast.
Capa filmed several cassettes of film, managing to protect them from bullets, splinters and water. Further, a real shock awaited him: according to the oversight of the laboratory assistant who showed materials from Normandy sent by Kapa to the editorial office of Life magazine in London, almost all the shooting was lost. Only 11 frames were saved that had various technical defects. Unexpectedly contained in them fuzziness, blur, spots gave the photographs such expressiveness that they went around all the world's leading media and became classics of photography.
Agency "Magnum"
The post-war glory of the most famous US newsreel did not change the lifestyle of Robert Capa. He was friends with artists and writers, fell in love with movie stars without memory. The most famous diva of that time - the stunning Ingrid Bergman - was ready to marry him if he stopped going on his business trips to areas of military conflict. As a result, they broke up.
In 1947, the Magnum photo agency was founded, headed by Robert Capa. The classics of photo art - Henri Cartier-Beresson, David Seymour, George Roger - who joined him, aimed to create a leading association of photo documentaries capable of describing events anywhere in the world with the necessary quality and speed. This goal was achieved, despite the difficult times the agency had overcome.
Wars after the war
Robert Kapa, biography, photographs, whose books are full of terrible materials from the fields of military battles, also liked to shoot a peaceful life, finding stories that became classics. In 1949, he made a trip to the USSR, which was an attempt to open the “iron curtain” that was lowering from the outside.
But the main occupation remained military photojournalism. Kapa continued to drive where the shots rattled. In 1948, he covers the events of the war declared by the Arab states to the new state of Israel.
The last photograph of reporter Robert Kap was taken on May 25, 1954 in Indochina. It shows how American soldiers are cautiously wandering around the shot through section of the highway. In an instant, an anti-personnel mine explosion will sound, breaking the life of the famous photojournalist.