Photo exhibit gives view of European history

By KEVIN DEAN
School of Communication
University of Miami

PRAGUE— John Steinbeck sat quietly at a desk in front of a large mirror in his Moscow apartment, slowly and methodically punching the keys on his typewriter.

The year was 1947 and he was working with Hungarian photographer and friend Robert Capa to provide a first glimpse at life behind the USSR’s iron curtain.

As Steinbeck sat with his back to the rest of the room, Capa discreetly slipped in behind him, aimed his camera at the mirror, and captured both of their reflections.

The flash startled the American novelist. He glanced up from his typewriter, surprised. But then he realized that the intruder was Capa and his thin, dark mustache twitched as his lips parted into a sly smile.

The photo captures not only a view of one of the most prolific writers of our time, but, most importantly, it portrays the warm bond that Capa continually steered from mere photographer-subject to lifelong friendship until his early death in 1954.

So it’s not surprising that almost all of the photographed faces in Capa’s appropriately titled exhibition “Faces of History” stare back at Capa with Steinbeck’s glistening and appreciative eyes.

“Capa used to say to younger colleagues, ‘Like people and let them know it,’” said Vanda Skalova, 35, who arranged Capa’s photos for the exhibition at the Municipal House in Old Town here.

The idea for the exhibition came from Capa biographer Richard Whelan, who thought that assembling a chronological exhibition of Capa’s photography of faces would provide a history of the tumultuous, war-torn 20 th Century, as well as Capa’s emotional and profound life as a photographer.

Magnum Photos, arguably the world’s leading photography agency that Capa helped create in 1943, sorted through Capa’s immense collection of photographs and selected 90. The photos range from his coverage of the Spanish Civil War to the Normandy invasion of World War II to images of Pablo Picasso on the beach, Ernest Hemingway on hunting trips with his son Gregory, and Henri Matisse conceptualizing brilliant murals.

The exhibit displayed earlier this summer in Milan and will continue to Spain after Prague.

Unique to the Prague exhibition is a handful of photos of Capa when he traveled through Prague with photographers Vindrich Marco and Viktor Radnicky shortly after working with Steinbeck in the USSR.

Photos of Capa wearing a black suit and eating sausages at a Prague party were supplied by leading Czech photography historian and Prague native Anna Farova. Many years ago, Farova tried to publish these photos but Capa’s brother Cornell wanted them to be published first by Magnum.

“Anna tried for almost 40 years to get these photos published and now, finally, they were displayed in the exhibit for the first time,” said Skalova.

Although Capa continually reinvented his photographic styles, it was his initial invention of himself that sparked his career.

Born Endre Friedman in Budapest in 1913, his career as a photographer blossomed after he fled from Hungary as a political exile at the age of 17. By the time he moved to Paris in 1934, he had already established himself among Europe’s elite community of photographers with his coverage of the Russian Revolution of 1932, his first published story.

In Paris, his name quickly became confused with the more famous photographer Georges Friedman. Endre needed to distinguish himself as a talented photographer with a unique voice, so he and his manager Gerda Taro invented a “well respected American photographer” named Robert Capa. Taro would collect the photos from this new, mysterious photographer and then distribute them to publications around the globe.

From there, Capa struck out on his own, documenting hunger strikes and socialist movements in France as well as early Nazi rallies in Germany filled with angry, open-mouthed, saluting soldiers.

But it would be Capa’s highly emotional photos from World War II that would establish him as a world renowned war photographer.

On the battlefields of Europe, Capa strayed from trite photos of famous generals and instead looked deep into the frightened souls of unknown soldiers on the German fronts, their faces straining to comprehend the evils before them.

Submerged in the chilly Atlantic during the Normandy invasions, Capa produced blurry yet poignant water level shots of Allied soldiers hunkering behind rusty barricades.

“I think that he didn’t want to take photos of dead people,” said Skalova of Capa’s war photos found in the exhibition. “He was more interested in showing photos of live soldiers because that’s more human, more powerful.”

After the war, Capa himself was left to comprehend the tragedies of war and to rethink his role as a photographer. He founded Magnum with fellow photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour, established the first offices in Paris and New York, and then took off for Hollywood.

There, he ran in social circles with celebrities, snapping photos of actor Gene Kelly dancing on stage and director John Huston lounging in a black robe on a hospital bed after a car accident, before being sent back to the battlefields of Indochina in 1954.

With correspondents from Time and Life magazines, Capa accompanied the French army on a mission to destroy enemy forts. While taking photos in the midst of the chaos, Capa stepped on a land mind and died.

His career began and ended as a compassionate war photographer, but also as a person who tried to understand the dark emotions that fuel human behavior.

In a book of his photos presented at the Prague exhibit, Robert Capa Photographs, there is a photograph of a July, 1940, Election Day fatality in Mexico City.

A man had just been shot in the chest and as he lay dying in the street, Capa snapped the shot just as fresh blood began to pour from the fatal wound. There is a horrified crowd huddled around the man, and directly above the victim’s head is a small Mexican boy, his mouth agape in sheer terror.

The boy’s eyes longingly stare through the camera and at the man behind the lens, as if he is asking Capa to tell him why men are so evil and cruel and bloodthirsty and inhuman.

Surely Capa would say something like, “I just take the photographs.”

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