"Moment of Death" by Robert Capa - photo from BBC article "Genius of Photography"After writing about Ansel Adams, I felt remiss in not mentioning another of my favorite photographers although he is pretty much in an opposite area of photography from Adams. I hope I am not boring too many people with all this "inspirational" series, but this blog is basically a record for me of what I was thinking about anyway. I actually first stumbled across him doing research for my senior thesis in undergrad and I'm convinced that if I could write a screenplay, his life story would make one of the best Hollywood movies ever.
He name was Andre Friedmann, but the world knew him as Robert Capa. He renamed himself because he felt it would be easier to pronounce and made him sound almost American, which is completely more understandable when you realize he was a nice Jewish kid living in Germany and France during the 1930s. He was one of the first "photo-journalists" (which so many of us derive our style of photography from), meaning he followed the action around and documented it as a journalist covers the news. This meant he spent most of his life following around war - from the Spanish Civil War to World War II to Indochina.
He had a really famous quote: "If your pictures aren't good enough, then you aren't close enough." This is really apparent if you look at his pictures from the D-Day landing - he actually accompanied a group of soliders and swam ashore onto Omaha Beach. (Um, for those of you who don't know what D-Day is - that's when the Allied troops including American troops landed in France and started on the campaign to take back Europe from Nazi Germany - I'm just never surprised by how little history people bother learning!). If you've ever seen the movie Saving Private Ryan and that amazing D-Day sequence, you can't help but feel like the cinematographer was directly influenced by Capa's work. They have that same gritty immediacy the film captures.
Capa had some hugely entertaining escapades. When reading about his life, you feel like he knew that following all these wars around meant he had to absolutely cram in the actual living part. He wasn't one to say no to a drink or a party; in fact, he co-founded the famous Magnum Photo Agency, named after the champagne bottle.
Although I'm not advocating crawling around and chasing wars (although one of my favorite writers, the journalist Sebastian Junger and the photographerthat frequently accompanies him, Tim Hetherington - a modern-day Hemingway of sorts with a twist of Capa - does just this and has written amazing stories accompanied by fantastic photographs from war-torn Somalia and Afghanistan) - Capa's commitment to his subject is truly an inspiration. He inspires all of us photographers to be in the moment, to capture things as they are unfolding and not be afraid to get a little dirty!
Sadly, you can't stay that close to the action forever. Robert Capa died in 1954 after stepping on a landmine in Indochina. Legend states that he died with his camera in his hands.
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