Capa, Robert - CAPPA CONNU ET INCONNU

• Paperback
• Editor: Biblioth�que nationale France; Edición: Textes (1900)
• Idioma: French
• ISBN-10: 2717723137
• ISBN-13: 978-2717723137
• Dimensiones del producto: 24.5 x 22 x 1.7 cm

Laure Beaumont-Maillet , honorary director of the Department of Prints and Photography at the BNF until 2006, has written around twenty books on the history of Paris and the history of art, including "Atget-Paris (Hazan, 1992). She has curated numerous exhibitions, including "Capa known and unknown" (2004) or "Humanist photography, 1945-1968" (2006).

Born in Budapest on October 22, 1913 under the name of Endre Friedmann, in a family of the Jewish bourgeoisie, he was arrested in 1931 at the age of seventeen for anti-fascist activities and forced by the regime of Admiral Horthy to leave Hungary. He leaves for Berlin where he finds a job in a photography agency. In 1932, he produced his first report in Copenhagen devoted to a meeting of Leon Trotsky in exile, but the arrival of Hitler in power again forced him to wander. He moved to Paris in September 1933. In the Montparnasse district, where foreigners congregate, he established contacts with photographers who became his friends: his compatriot André Kertész, David Seymour nicknamed Chim, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. In the fall of 1934, he became friends with a young German Jewish refugee, Gerta Pohorylle, who works for photographic agencies. She will be both his partner and his agent. Living in very precarious material conditions, they decide to adopt pseudonyms: he becomes Robert Capa, she Gerda Taro. Both emerged as photoreporters in favor of the Spanish War, in which she died in July 1937.
Robert Capa photographed five wars: the civil war in Spain (1936-1939), the Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion (1938), the Second World War in Europe (1941-1945), the first Arab-Israeli war (1948 ), finally the Indochina War (1954) where he died while jumping on a mine, on May 25, 1954, at the age of forty. No one had before him photographed the war with such a disregard for danger, nor with a keener compassion for the combatants and especially for the civilian populations victims of the conflicts. From 1938, the press inducted him as "the greatest war photographer". This very important part of his work, which belongs to our collective imagination, has obscured other aspects of his work. This exhibition, organized from French public and private collections, allows you to discover, alongside icons such as the portrait of Trotsky in Copenhagen, the Spanish militiaman, the photographs of the Landing of June 6, 1944 and all the major conflicts covered by Capa, amazing reports on the pilgrimages of Lisieux or the Tour of France in 1939, without forgetting remarkable portraits of artists. After seeing these photographs, it will no doubt be better understood that Julia Friedmann, his mother, refused him the honors of Arlington cemetery, on the grounds that he had always hated war. without forgetting remarkable portraits of artists. After having seen these photographs, it will no doubt be better understood that Julia Friedmann, his mother, refused for him the honors of the Arlington cemetery, on the grounds that he had always hated war. without forgetting remarkable portraits of artists. After having seen these photographs, it will no doubt be better understood that Julia Friedmann, his mother, refused for him the honors of the Arlington cemetery, on the grounds that he had always hated war.
This work was published on the occasion of the exhibition “  Capa known and unknown” , organized by the National Library of France and presented on the Richelieu site, in the Photo Gallery, from October 6 to December 31, 2004.