10 Famous Black and White Photographers
Famous for his pictures of combat, Jewish Robert Capa was born in Budapest, Hungary as ‘Friedmann Endre Ernö’ but re-invented himself as a famous American photographer called Robert Capa in 1934 when the Nazis started making life very difficult for Jews. He documented the course of five separate wars with his camera and specialised in capturing real life shots of people at the moment of crisis rather than studies. He died at the age of forty during the first Indochina war when he accidentally set off a landmine. His most famous work is a photo essay called ‘Capturing the Truth’.
His younger brother, Cornell Capa, later founded the International Fund for Concerned Photography in his name in 1966 and then the New York International Center of Photography in 1974. Also, the Overseas Press Club created a medal in his honour, the Robert Capa Gold Medal. Robert Capa is credited with creating the term ‘Generation X’, which he used to refer to the young people who became adults just after WWII, in a photo-essay published in 1953.
