Readers who find themselves in Brussels before 19 April 2009 would do worse with a couple hours' free time than going to the Jewish Museum for its Robert Capa Retrospective. Many of the legendary war photographer's most famous photos - including his "Falling Soldier" from the Spanish Civil War - are on display. Others, including many from Israel's early days, when refugees were as likely to be Jewish as Arab, show Capa's ability to capture human feeling on film.
Since Capa was instrumental in getting intellectual property protection for photographers, I hesitate to illustrate this post (for aficionados, the International Center of Photography's eMuseum has some 1,500 of his photos here). But I make an exception by including the poster for "Robert Capa in Love and War," the award-winning 2003 Anne Makepeace PBS documentary of the photographer's eventful life.
One of the biggest treats of the visit was the screening of Makepeace's film, which helps the uninitiated get to know the rakish Capa, who was a legend in his own lifetime. Indeed the Jewish Museum's retrospective seems to be timed to mark the 70th anniversary of "Picture Post" magazine's consecration of Capa as the "greatest war-photographer in the world" in late 1938.
Capa already had years of wartime coverage to his credit - he was all of 25 years old - and there were more wars to come: after Spain, there was China fighting Japanese invaders; Capa covering fighting with American soldiers in North Africa and Italy in 1943; landing with the first wave on D-Day; jumping with paratroopers into Germany; and the 1948 Israel-Arab war. He was killed covering the end of the French Indochina War in 1954.
Anne Makepeace found soldiers' testimony on how much Capa was one of them. Several remembered him being conversational in the foxhole under fire. Watching her film, I was reminded of my late father's stories about war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who was killed while covering my father's 77th Division in the Pacific. Capa, Pyle... the tradition of honoring courageous correspondents continues with the Robert Capa Gold Medal.
Capa was much more than a chronicler of his times, he was an active anti-Fascist, his resistance starting in his native Hungary. His temporary refuge in Germany ended - Capa, born Endre Friedmann, was Jewish - when Hitler came to power. He continued to document Fascism, triumphant in Spain, defeated with Hitler's fall, throughout much of this life. Belgium's own wartime collaborator Léon Degrelle was the subject of one of his shots.
I could go on. With some 70,000 negatives to his name (most of his D-Day pictures were ruined in the lab!), Robert Capa alone constituted a record of much of what mattered in the mid-20th century. Hurry to Rue des Minimes in Brussels while this exhibit still lasts.
(Image source: Films Transit)