Hello everybody!
In the first blog post of my famous photographers’ series, I wanted to look at the story of Robert Capa, who is one of the founders and even mastermind behind the Magnum project. Would you like to accompany me in this very impressive life story?
Here we go.
Andre Friedman aka Robert Capa
André Friedman (aka Robert Capa) was born in 1913 in Budapest. Capa spent his childhood with the hardships of World War I and afterwards. The polarization seen in the country and Europe in his youth also affected Capa. As a racially discriminated Jewish youth, he was sympathetic to leftist movements and was exiled at the age of 17, never having a real home again.
Capa went to Berlin in 1931. There, he enrolled at the famous Deutsche Hochschule Für Politik to study political science. When he had to work due to financial difficulties, he found a job as a dark room assistant at the Dephot agency with the help of his friend Eva Besnyö. Dephot was founded by Simon Guttmann in 1928 to provide material for the increasingly widespread photographic press. Capa left school in 1932 and devoted himself to his job at Dephot. He was assisting photographers, including Felix Man. Capa’s first job in his photography career was to photograph Trotsky, who gave a speech on “The Meaning of the Soviet Revolution” at Copenhagen with Leica, which he borrowed from Guttmann. The name written under the photo, which was published in full page in Der Welt Spiegel, was “Friedman-Dephot.”
The years in Paris
In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany. Like many people affected by Hitler’s policies, Friedman was among those who left Germany. He stayed for a short time, first in Vienna and then in Budapest. However, the situation here was not much different. He went to Paris, as many intellectuals did at that time.
Life in Paris was very difficult for André. Like many forced migrants, he even had difficulty finding something to eat. He usually spent his time in Cafe du Dome, where he met other immigrant friends. Here, one day, he met David Syzmin (Chim), a Polish immigrant who was a photojournalist and managed to get a job in the communist magazine Regards. Another name he would meet through Chim would be Henri Cartier-Bresson, who came from an upper-class family from Normandy.
Capa was an extremely extroverted man of action, while Chim was an introverted, intellectual man of thought. Regardless, the friendship that emerged between Bresson, Capa and Chim was the first step towards the founding of Magnum.
Another important person who entered Capa’s life was Gerda Taro. Taro was born in Stuttgart. She got into trouble with the Nazis because of her relations with the communist party and fled to Paris at the first opportunity. Here, she worked for the Alliance photo agency owned by another German immigrant, Maria Eisner. Taro introduced Capa and Eisner, and Capa also started working with the Alliance. On the other hand, a great love was born between Capa and Taro.
André Friedman becomes “Robert Capa”
There are many stories about the transformation of André Friedman into Robert Capa, but the most famous is told in John Hersey’s famous article “The Man Who Invented Himself”; Gerda and André had decided to form a three-person partnership. Gerda would assume secretarial and marketing responsibility, and André would work in the darkroom. They both worked for the rich, famous and talented (imaginary) American photographer Robert Capa, who was supposedly visiting France. The “three” went to work together, Friedman took the photos, Gerda sold them, and the photos were being credited on behalf of the non-existent Capa. Because this Capa was so rich, none of his photographs were sold for less than 150 francs. This was three times more than the normal price at the time. This lie was revealed after a while by Vu’s editor Lucien Vogel. However, it did not create a problem and the two were sent to Spain on behalf of Vu (http://www.photo-seminars.com/Fame/capa.htm).
Note: In this blog post, I get help from the famous book of Russell Miller and the website of The International Center of Photography (ICP).
If you want to take a look here is the info; Miller, Russell. Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History, Grove Pres, New York, 1997. ICP: www.icp.org.
Take care!
Anıl Uzun