Robert Capa
On October 22, 1913, Robert Capa was born by the name of Endre Erno Friedmann. Friedmann was born and lived in Budapest, Hungary only until he was eighteen-years-old before realizing that there was little future in Hungary. He fled to Berlin, leaving his home, and slowly found his passion in photography. He had wanted to become a writer before photography, but he found that he grew to love the art of photography. Capa had also had a younger brother, Cornell Capa, who had also become a photographer. Later, Friedmann moved from Germany to France right as Nazism began to rise and found it harder to be a journalist. During this time, Friedmann had adopted the name ‘Robert Capa’; Capa meaning shark. He’d actually been a Hungarian combat photographer and a photojournalist back in Hungary. He photographed several wars including: the First Indochina War, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II, and the Spanish Civil War.
Just like most other photographers, Capa had his love life. In 1934, he met a German woman named Gerda Pohorylle. At the time, Capa had called himself Andre Friedmann. Soon they became engaged, but during one of Capa’s business trips in 1937, Gerda had been killed during a battle in Madrid, Spain. Six years later in 1943, he met another woman by the name of Elaine Justin. They quickly fell in love, but there relationship lasted only until the end of the Spanish Civil War. Elaine ended the relationship to marry one of her friends in 1945. A few months later, Capa again fell in love with an actress named Ingrid Bergman. In the December of 1945, he followed her to Hollywood. She had tried convincing him to marry her, but Capa had already decided he did not wanted to live in Hollywood; their relationship also ended in the summer of 1946 when he traveled to Turkey.
In 1936 Robert Capa had been known all across the globe for one of his photographs called “The Falling Soldier”. His photograph was taken during the Spanish Civil War on the battle field where the soldier apparently fell to his death after being shot. Later, during World War II, Capa lived in New York City to escape Nazi persecution. New York City kept him busy but he eventually took 106 photographs of World War II, but while the photos were being processed in the darkroom, a 15 year-old-assistant put the dryer on too high and melted most of the WWII photos. A tea-boy named Larry Burrows was blamed for the accident even though he obviously had not done it.
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