Even in his lifetime, Robert Capa was described as the greatest war photographer in the world. It was an ironic achievement for a man who loathed war, but to this day, no one better embodies the photographer as cultural soldier and no one`s work better encapsulates the violence and brutality of the twentieth century than Capa. This volume presents a rich selection of his work as a war photographer, starting from the images that established his fame: his documentation of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War from 1936-1939 and the Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion in 1938. It continues on to World War II--including Capa`s stunning photographs of the D-Day landing in Normandy, where on June 6, 1944, he swam to shore alongside the second assault wave of American troops--and on to the first Arab-Israel conflict in 1948, before concluding with the First Indochina War, in which Capa joined a French regiment and eventually lost his life. Today, the wars of the twentieth century may have transformed from wounds into scars, but Capa`s images remain as devastating as ever, describing the trauma of war through a civilian`s eyes, and reminding us that despite years of loss and destruction, humanity manages to persist.
Born Endre Friedmann in Hungary, where he was nicknamed "cápa" (shark) at school, Robert Capa (1913-1954) adopted the name by which he is remembered in the early 1930s, following his relocation from Berlin to Paris. His first published photograph was a portrait of Leon Trotsky giving a speech on "The Meaning of the Russian Revolution" in Copenhagen, in 1932; his most famous work was his record of D-Day, at Omaha Beach. Capa was killed by a land mine, during an assignment on the First Indochina War.