Robert Capa

Robert Capa, born in Hungary, was known for his extreme bravery, amazing eye, and irrestitible charm. He was a co-founder of the Magnum cooperative picture agency and died in 1954 after stepping on a landmine while on an assignment in Indochina. His life and work were inextricably linked, and both have had a marked influence on generations of photographers.

Richard Whelan is an outstanding authority on Capa's life and work. He is a New York-based independent cultural historian and the author of several books, including acclaimed biographies of Robert Capa and Alfred Stieglitz.

This is the first book to reproduce the definitive set of 937 rarely seen and classic images by Robert Capa (1913-54), one of the most influential documentary photographers of the twentieth century. Capa, a founding member of Magnum photographic agency, had the mind of a passionate and committed journalist and the eye of an artist. His lifework, consisting of more than 70,000 negatives, constitutes an unparalleled documentation of a crucial 22-year period (1932-54), encompassing some of the most catastrophic and dramatic events of the last century.

This book represents the most definitive selection of Capa's work ever published - 937 photographs meticulously selected by his brother Cornell Capa (himself a noted Life photographer), and his biographer, Richard Whelan. The photographs, arranged in chronological order as stories and accompanied by brief commentaries, reveal the dramatic shifts in location and subject matter that Capa experienced from day to day - from war-torn Israel to Pablo Picasso on a sunny beach in France, and from Ernest Hemingway carousing in London to Capa's historic images of the Allied landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy in 1944.