Robert Capa Book

Robert Capa's photographic career spanned over twenty years, from 1932 to 1954, the year in which he was killed after he stepped on a Vietminh anti-personnel mine while covering the aftermath of the French military disaster at Dienbienphu in northern Indochina. His photographic coverage of mostly newsworthy events, such as wars and political contests, produced some of his most iconic and, importantly to him, most bankable images (his first published image was a photo of Leon Trotsky at a rally in Copenhagen in 1932). That was around the time that he realized that his dream of becoming a journalist meant placing the word "photo" in front of the title.

I'm not sure when that term was invented, but Capa, mentored in Paris by the great Andre Kertesz, and befriended by future greats David Szmin (Seymour or Chim) and Henri Cartier-Bresson, became one of the world's premier photojournalists by the middle 1930's. Between wars, Capa was a prolific contributor of human interest photo stories ranging from the Hemingways, to Pablo Picasso, to travel photo-stories for "Life" and "Holiday" magazines

"Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection" is a hefty collection of high quality reprints of over 930 of Capa's finest photos. His brother, Cornell Capa and photographer Richard Whelan have done a superb job of selecting examples from among Robert's archive of over 70,000 photos. The pictures are printed on heavy, high-quality paper and are accompanied with running commentary that describes the subjects portrayed. An excellent biography and chronological time-line are included.

I enjoyed reading the book by spending time on each approximate subject-area separately, such as Spanish Civil War, World War II, China-Soviet War, etc. The book is a treat regardless of how it is explored, however. What particularly stands out is how Capa captured people in all walks of life, including generals and political leaders, as if the subjects aren't at all concerned that a camera is recording their expressions. The greatest strength in Capa's work, though, is in the overwhelming number of images of ordinary people living in quite tumultuous circumstances.

There was a time when most people saw visual images of the world through the medium of picture magazines, such as the American "Life". The best photojournalists shot pictures for these magazines, either by being commissioned to cover a particular story, or by submission of free-lance work. Capa mastered the marketing technique early on, with the collaboration of his business partner and lover, Gerda Taro. Capa mentored both Gerda and his brother Cornell in photography, and both became well known, although Gerda's life was cut short by the Spanish Civil War. Capa would continue to face danger by covering wars on an intimate level. His most riveting photographs are the slightly fuzzy images which he took while dodging bullets on Omaha Beach during D-Day in 1944 (the fuzzy, murky nature of the photos were the result of mishandling of Capa's negatives in a "Life" darkroom).

This willingness to work under deadly conditions is what allowed Capa to produce such stunning images, such as the dead American sniper victim, the numerous German prisoners of war, and the public humiliation of French female collaborators. He never failed to find a way to convey the humanity that he saw in his subjects; some of his best work in this regard consisted of the numerous pictures he made of children, practically his trademark style, during his last months in Japan, Indochina and Laos in 1954. All of it is included in this book, along with much more.