CAPA AT MUSEO CAMERA
Iconic photographs by Robert Capa.
8th to 31st January, 2023.
Venue: Museo Camera, Gurugram
Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Centre, Delhi in association with Museo Camera will open the works of the world-renowned Photojournalist Robert Capa. The exhibition, on loan from Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, will showcase a unique selection of Hungarian born, Robert Capa, considered to be one of the greatest visual chroniclers of combat. He showed the power of images constructed from a deep sense of humanism and in his famous words “If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
These photographs showcased at the exhibition don’t only present the world of wars, but are also safe-keepers of Robert Capa’s images capturing the moments of peace. The aim is to uncover the essential force of the oeuvre.
The exhibition opens on 8th January and is on till 31st January 2023.
About Robert Capa
Robert Capa (Endre Friedmann, October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) is considered a unique visual chronicler of several 20th-century wars. Some say his name was a combination of Robert Taylor and Frank Capra and others say that it is an anglicized version of his nickname cápa, as in shark – from high school.
The Hungarian photographer, who covered five wars directly from the battlefield, made his mark in photography in the course of his tragically short life. His photographs taken in the frontlines and in the heartland brought about a visual world establishing a new school, and he showed the power of images constructed from a deep sense of humanism to generations to come, up till today.
As it was characteristic of him, he created his photographs depicting soldiers and partisans, ordinary moments and battles, from the perspective of the participant observer, with unlimited empathy. He was there with them, really close, and this is how his images were born.
Also, with the powerful accents of the exhibited thematic units, we would like to expose the compositional virtuosity of Robert Capa, together with the images constructed from his thorough, minute observations, and his unique capability for capturing fast occurring actions.
Robert Capa found it important to not only capture the event itself but also the preceding occurrences and the consequences: a war never starts with the first shot, and it does not end with the last one.
In 1932, he took a series of 28 images of Trotsky with a Leica which went on to be published in Weltspiegel.He became world-famous with The Falling Soldier (The Death of a Loyalist Militiaman), shot on 5 September 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. This also was one of the saddest moments of his life; the loss of his love and work companion, Gerda Taro, the first female photojournalist to die on the front.
His photographs were published in some of the most important picture magazines like Life, Weekly Illustrated, Picture Post, Collier’s. The legendary photo editor Stefan Lorant captioned one of the photographs: “Robert Capa is the greatest war photographer in the world”
Landing with the first American troops on D-Day, he photographed several rolls of film on the Allied operation on 6 July 1944; however, only The Magnificent Eleven frames survived. These images inspired Steven Spielberg when he shot Saving Private Ryan.
IN 1945, he began to write his autobiography, originally meant to be a movie script. The volume was published with the title Slightly Out of Focus in 1947.
Capa together with Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, David Chim Seymour, Maria Eisner, William Vandivert founded Magnum Photos co-operative photography agency in 1947, which has successfully operated ever since.
At the end of the forties and early fifties, he turned photojournalist: commissioned by Holiday, he captured scenes from the life of socialists, holiday venues, as well as world-famous artists, including portrait series of Picasso and Henri Matisse.
In 1954, on an assignment from Life to cover French colonial wars, as he crossed the Red River with the soldiers and, as he photographed them before action, he stepped on a landmine and died on May 25, 1954 in Thai Bihn, Vietnam.
The Robert Capa Collection at Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest, Hungary
Budapest has become one of the most important safe-keepers of the Capa estate besides New York and Tokyo. The photographs were selected by Cornell Capa, Robert Capa’s younger brother, and photo historian Richard Whelan, Capa’s monographer out of the close to 70 thousand negatives left behind by Capa.
Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Centre, Delhi
It’s not just by chance that Hungary’s oldest Cultural Institute in Asia has been established in Delhi. Hungarians have always turned with great respect and appreciation to India, to its vast and ancient culture, to its depth of philosophy and religions and its post-Independence democracy. India, with its rapidly developing, dynamic economy, and being a regional superpower in Asia, has been playing a strategic role in Hungary’s foreign policy.
The Hungarian Cultural Institute or previously the Hungarian Information and Cultural Centre, founded in 1978 and working continuously for decades on ‘Janpath’, one of the posh localities of the capital. This building, also known as Baikunth, contemporary and of the same style as the other major public buildings, was one of the most attractive mansions of the capital.
The cultural relations between India and Hungary dated back to a much longer time than just these few decades since the establishment of this Centre/Institute. Famous Hungarian travellers, scholars and explorers have reached India as early as in the 18th century. János Honigberger, who had come from Transylvania, was the court doctor of the famous Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It was Alexander Csoma de Kőrös who made the ever first Tibetan-English dictionary in India, and during the centuries, also a good number of Hungarian artists came to get inspiration from this country. Indians do appreciate their Hungarian born countrymen. Paintings by Amrita Sher Gil, the outstanding 20th century artist, born to a Hungarian mother and an Indian father in Budapest, are among the greatest art treasures of India today. Indians also remember that the legendary poet Rabindranath Tagore was treated in Hungary for his cardiac ailment, and that he used to recall the memories of his visit to Hungary with much fondness and gratitude.
The most important target of our institute is to strengthen the cultural, scientific and educational relations between the two countries as well as to increase the existing ones. Our Institute is also responsible for certain tasks of cultural diplomacy. We assist Hungarian scholars and scientists in finding the right Indian partner institutions, and pay attention to scholars so that they can utilize their scholarships in the most efficient manner while being in India. Our Institute’s networking system facilitates research scientists and universities from Hungary and India to be able to contact each other, and also, that Hungarian and Indian ensembles can give guest performances in each other’s countries. Hungarian language class students can learn Hungarian with the help of the Institute and the Embassy of Hungary as well, and some of them have become recognized translators by now.
About Museo Camera
Museo Camera is a modern museum to showcase the art, science and history of photography. A space that has on display over 4000 cameras and photographic equipment from over 100 countries dating back to the 1850s, historical archives, the works of legends as well as cutting edge contemporary lens-based art. The museum evolved from the collection of photographic equipment of renowned photographer, historian and archivist Aditya Arya, founder, director, Museo Camera.
Museo Camera, The Centre for Photographic Arts is a unique initiative partnership between India Photo archive Foundation and The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG).
India Photo Archive Foundation is a trust that was created in 2009. India Photo Archive Foundation is a trust for generating awareness of contemporary and historical photographs, creation of archives, highlighting the historical value of photographic archives and collections, and to encourage the dissemination, access and use of such archives for academic, institutional and cultural purposes. Museo Camera is one of the initiatives of the Foundation.
Venue
Museo Camera, Centre for Photographic Arts
Shri Ganesh Mandir Marg, DLF Phase IV, Sector 28, Gurugram, Haryana 122002
Date
8th January – 31st January 2023
Timing
11 am – 7 pm (Tuesday – Sunday)