The photojournalist Robert Capa (Other location: Accademia d’Ungheria in Roma)

Other location: Accademia d'Ungheria in Roma
On view: September 21, 2023 - November 19, 2023

The exhibition is a collaboration between the Hungarian Academy of Rome and the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center.

Robert Capa (October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954), the world-famous photographer born in Budapest, was not only an eyewitness to the defining historical events of the 20th century but also a messenger in twenty-three countries on four continents. Throughout his life, he believed that the universal language of photography could bring about change and make the world a better place. He could look at everything with that first “creative” glance, and everything he touched seemed new and unprecedented. He saw what others could not, he was able to observe and think with a change of perspective, and therefore he was able to redefine everything and approach things with a new perspective.

His incandescent, all-pervading talent permeated all his activities, his whole life. His courage, his boldness, and the visual power of his photographs are unparalleled. His never-failing empathy and humanism defined his every activity, he was, in Henri Cartier-Bresson’s words, one of the “ethical adventurers”, and the moral position of his images is an example to all.

In the exhibition, we show the man who, after five battlefield tours, documented what happened in the immediate vicinity of death and reinvented the methodology of battlefield photography.

The world-wide fame was brought to Capa by his photograph taken in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, titled Death of a loyalist militiaman, Córdoba front, Spain, but one of the saddest moments of his life – losing his love and colleague, the Polish Gerda Taro –, is also tied to this period.

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. In his own famous words: ”If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

It was Capa’s idea in 1947 to found the Magnum Photos photo agency together with the photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David “Chim” Seymour.

The showcased selection presents 75 images of Capa’s oeuvre, from the photograph capturing Trotsky’s speech from one of his first assignments to a picture exposed in the Indochina War.

These photographs don’t only present the world of wars, but they are also safe-keepers of Robert Capa’s images capturing the moments of peace.

Via the photographs purchased in 2008, Budapest has become one of the most important safe-keepers of the Capa estate besides New York and Tokyo. The series titled Master’s Set III, presenting the life of Robert Capa, includes 937 enlargements created in the 1990s. These photographs were selected by Cornell Capa (Robert Capa’s younger brother) and photo historian Richard Whelan (Robert Capa’s monographer) between 1990 and 1992 from the nearly 70 thousand negatives left behind by Capa.

The exhibition is a selection of prints based on images from the Hungarian Robert Capa Master Collection kept in the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center.