“It’s not enough to have talent. You must also be Hungarian.”
Andre Friedmann was born in 1918 under the Hungarian regime of the time. With a still undiscovered talent for taking pictures, he left the country for Berlin to study at 18 and found work as a darkroom assistant. Only just beginning to fully realize and hone his skills, Friedmann was driven out of the country by the imminent threat of Nazism. He moved to Paris and met his future love interest and fellow photographer Gerda Taro. They decided to form a three way working relationship with a popular, wealthy, and skilled American photographer by the name of Robert Capa. Gerda would sell the pictures, Andre would be in the darkroom developing them, and Capa would be behind the camera. Since Capa was so famous his photos, of course, had to be sold to the magazines for at least three times the usual rate. There was only one problem: there was no Capa…or at least not yet. An acute editor soon discovered that the band of three was actually only two. But the pictures were too good to let go of. They still sold, and Friedmann continued to be able to take photos. Once their clever plan had been revealed, Friedmann himself took on the mantle of Robert Capa. The truly groundbreaking war photography that followed for years after is currently being showcased at the International Center of Photography.
As is made abundantly clear by the photos at ICP’s gallery, Capa was a master of his craft. He captured the ugly (and true) side of war like no one else. His photographic portrayal of the monstrously destructive effects of war on the average people occupying those spaces is as powerful as his shots depicting the actual soldiers. Bravery, determination, fear, frustration, tension, despair, and danger: all can be seen or sensed through Capa’s lens.
The title of Capa’s most famous photograph is “Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death.” It is more commonly referred to simply as, “The Falling Soldier.” As its formal name implies, it depicts a Spanish Republican loyalist at the exact moment immediately after he was struck by an unseen enemy’s bullet. Upon its original publication it was extremely well received and circulated by the press. It is considered to have had a large impact on shaping the masses’ opinions on the Spanish Civil War. It was reprinted significantly larger than the original for display at the International Center of Photography. Capa’s definitive shot was easily the single largest photo hanging on the museum’s walls.
Capa’s photos at ICP are all of his best and the gallery is extremely well put together. The pairing of his work with that of Gerda Taro’s is an appropriate and natural one. It adds a sense of wholeness to the exhibit as well as some perspective. Capa and Taro were, after all, intimately involved in several respects and they had a degree of influence over one another’s work. Displaying both collections simultaneously was an excellent decision on ICP’s part. The galleries are spacious, intuitively curated, and never boring, even if solely on the merit of the brilliance of Capa’s photos.
It has been said regarding his death that he left a legacy, “for which there is no other description than…Capa.” To see his photos is to understand that Capa is legend. He pioneered the field that we all now from such a comfortable distance call photojournalism. He died for the cause as well, meeting his premature end by stepping on a landmine in Indochina. His war photographs are considered to be “among the greatest recorded moments of modern history.”
Before long, Capa achieved a great deal of recognition and was proclaimed by the magazines to be the best war photographer in the world. The photos on display at ICP are a testament to the validity of that bold statement.