About whom?

Capa. Robert Capa.

On October 22nd, 1913, Robert Capa was born Andre Friedman in Hungary. His parents were Jewish and from the country of Budapest. In 1931, Capa left Hungrey to avoid the Regime in control there when he was 18 years old. He ended up in Berlin were he studied political science at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik from 1931 til 1933. He then worked in Germany as a photographer then the Nazi Regime came to power so he moved to France in 1933 were he met his Polish fiancée, Gerda Taro.

While Capa was in France he struggled to get his freelance journalism business started. Then in Paris he particapated in creating the agency of Alliance Photo. During this time Robert Capa was still known as Andre Friedman until he and Gerda Taro created the identity of the "American photographer" Robert Capa and sold his work under this name.

The newly created Robert Capa then covered the Spanish Civil War from 1935-37 and his pictures made it into Weekly Illustrated, Life and also in some French publications. In 1936 is when Robert Capa made is first big impression world wide when he captured a Loyalist soldier falling to his death. In 1938 Capa Covers the Japanese invasion of China, soon after in 1939 he emigrated to the United States.
Robert Capa then covered much of WWII (1939-45) including the landing and invasion of Omaha beach known as D-Day. Capa took 108 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion. However, a member of the staff of Life Magazine made a mistake in the darkroom setting the dryer too high and melted the negatives. Only eleven frames in total were publishable.

In 1942 he was recruited by Collier's Weekly as a photojournalist. He went to Britain and covered the Home Front before moving to North Africa. In July of 1943 Capa joined Life Magazine and accompanied Allied troops to Sicily. Capa continued to photograph in World War II and caputred the Liberation of Paris and the battle of the Bulge as a Life and Collier's journalist.

In 1947 he founded Magnum Photos, in conjunction with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert and in 1951 he became president.

In 1954 Capa went to Japan with a Magnum exhibition. While he was there, Life suddenly needed a photographer on the Indochina front. Capa volunteered. On May 25th 1954 the man know as Robert Capa was found dead still clutching his camera after he had stepped on a landmine Vietnam.His funeral was held in the United States at the old Quaker meeting house in Purchase, New York.