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Cornell Capa, Photographer And ICP Founder, Dies At 90
May 23, 2008
By PDN Staff
Renowned photojournalist, former Magnum president, and International Center of Photography founder Cornell Capa died Friday morning at age 90.
Capa's death was announced by the ICP, which said he died at home peacefully after battling Parkinson's disease for several years.
Capa is remembered for coining the phrase "the concerned photographer," describing those who use their photography to contribute to humanity’s well-being. The idea has been an inspiration for countless photojournalists over the last five decades.
"He was an extraordinarily warm-hearted guy who made incredible opportunities for an enormous number of us," said ICP director Willis E. "Buzz" Hartshorn. "The humanism that he expressed towards photography was something that he really did bring into his daily life. And the sense of loyalty that he engendered in his staff was extraordinary and unique."
"I think the other thing about him is that he’s probably the last of a generation," Hartshorn added. "I don’t think it is possible to do anymore in this field what this man has accomplished."
Robert Pledge, a friend and the head of Contact Press Images, called Capa "monumental."
"The legacy of the ICP, what he did, is so tremendous, and totally changed the understanding and interest in photography in this country and beyond," Pledge said. "The history of every art form... is always shaped by incredible individuals, and in our field he's one of those rare, special, amazing people."
Capa was the younger brother of pioneering war photojournalist and Magnum founder Robert Capa, whose 1954 death shaped the younger Capa’s commitment to humanity-centered photography.
Born in Budapest in 1918, Cornell Capa moved to Paris to study medicine in 1936. By night, he worked in a commercial photo lab, developing and printing photographs shot by his brother, Henri Cartier-Bresson and David ‘Chim’ Seymour. The work convinced Capa that he could affect more people through photography than through medicine.
In 1937, Capa followed his mother to New York, where he soon began working in the darkroom of Life magazine. His first published story, shot at the 1939 Worlds Fair in New York, appeared in Picture Post. During World War II, Capa served in the Photo-Intelligence Unit of the U.S. Air Force. Afterwards, he became a staff photographer for Life, shooting notable personalities such as TV star Jack Paar, painter Grandma Moses and actor Clark Gable for the magazine’s covers.
Capa decided to remain at Life even after his brother, along with Seymour and Cartier-Bresson, formed the Magnum Photos cooperative in 1947. “One thing that Life and I agreed right from the start was that one war photographer was enough for my family,” he said later. “I was to be a photographer of peace.”
But Capa had a change of heart when his brother died in 1954 after stepping on a landmine while on assignment in Vietnam. Within weeks, he resigned from Life and joined Magnum, where morale was low after the sudden deaths of the elder Capa and Werner Bischof. As Capa explained in a cable to Magnum’s Paris office, “My decision to join is personal, firm and conditional. It is based fully on belief of importance of Magnum idea and loyalty to friends.”
When Seymour was killed while covering the Suez Crisis in 1956, Capa assumed the role as president of Magnum, a position he held until 1960.
Capa continued working as a full-time photographer until 1974, gravitating toward politics and social issues. “I have aimed to be a credible witness, one who cares about the world he inhabits,” Capa said of his work in the introduction to his self-titled 1992 book. “My aim has been to share my vision with the world.” He shot photo essays documenting the destruction of indigenous cultures in Latin America (the subject of three of his books, including Farewell to Eden), the elderly in the United States, mentally challenged children, the Six-Day War, Soviet culture, and various presidential campaigns.
One of Capa’s favorite subjects was President John F. Kennedy, whose 1960 campaign he covered for Life. Struck by the inspirational tone of President Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address, Capa wanted to assemble what he called an “instant book” on the first hundred days of Kennedy’s presidency. For help, he enlisted eight Magnum photographers, including Elliott Erwitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marc Riboud and Burt Glinn and several writers and historians. Capa covered the White House, where he struck up a rapport with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who later became an important supporter of the International Center of Photography. The resulting book, Let Us Begin, was published on day 110 and is often cited as the first topical book of photojournalism.
In 1966, Capa teamed up with Bischof’s widow, Rosellina Bischof, and Seymour’s sister, Eileen Schneiderman, to establish the International Fund for Concerned Photography. The Fund sought to keep alive the work of his brother, Bischof and Seymour by promoting what Capa called “concerned photography.” The fund sponsored its first traveling exhibit in 1967. Aptly titled “The Concerned Photographer,” it featured the work of Bischof, Robert Capa, Seymour, Leonard Freed, Andre Kertesz, and Dan Weiner.
Recognizing that the Fund needed its own gallery, Capa opened the International Center of Photography in New York 1974. Since its founding, ICP has hosted more than 500 exhibitions and displayed the work of more than 3,000 photographers.
“ICP was an outgrowth of Cornell’s determination to see that his brother would not be forgotten and so that became his cause, and it was very much a one-man institution to begin with,” Capa’s friend and Magnum colleague John G. Morris recalled earlier this year. “He had supporters, of course … but it was his determination and his taste that established ICP.”
The demands of running the ICP left Capa with no time for his own photography. “This I had not foreseen or planned,” Capa wrote in his self-titled 1992 book, but he added that he had no regrets about it.
Capa stepped down as ICP Director in 1994, and began devoting more time to publishing and exhibiting his work. In 2000, the ICP honored its Founding Director by inaugurating the Cornell Capa Infinity Award for Distinguished Achievement in Photography.
British photojournalist Don McCullin, who met Capa in Jerusalem in 1967, was the subject of an ICP exhibition in the 1980s and received ICP's Cornell Capa Award in 2006. "To have my name associated with the great name of Capa made me really thrilled," McCullin said.
"We wish we had a Cornell Capa on this side of the Atlantic, somebody who gave photography a kind of respect on a spiritual level," McCullin said.
Anthony Bannon, director of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, N.Y., said Capa created a community and passed his concerns on to others.
"He lived 'concerned photography': through his extraordinary images, through Magnum, through the institution he created, and even more important, the community and culture embodied in the International Center of Photography," Bannon said.
Capa is pre-deceased by his wife of 61 years, Edith Capa, who died in 2001.
Funeral information
A private burial service will be held Wednesday, May 28. Capa will be burried at the Capa family grave site at Friends Cemetery in Amawalk, N.Y.
A memorial service will be held on Wednesday, September 10 at 10 a.m. at The Times Center, 242 West 41st Street between 7th & 8th Avenues in New York.
Cornell Capa, Photographer And ICP Founder, Dies At 90
May 23, 2008
By PDN Staff
Renowned photojournalist, former Magnum president, and International Center of Photography founder Cornell Capa died Friday morning at age 90.
Capa's death was announced by the ICP, which said he died at home peacefully after battling Parkinson's disease for several years.
Capa is remembered for coining the phrase "the concerned photographer," describing those who use their photography to contribute to humanity’s well-being. The idea has been an inspiration for countless photojournalists over the last five decades.
"He was an extraordinarily warm-hearted guy who made incredible opportunities for an enormous number of us," said ICP director Willis E. "Buzz" Hartshorn. "The humanism that he expressed towards photography was something that he really did bring into his daily life. And the sense of loyalty that he engendered in his staff was extraordinary and unique."
"I think the other thing about him is that he’s probably the last of a generation," Hartshorn added. "I don’t think it is possible to do anymore in this field what this man has accomplished."
Robert Pledge, a friend and the head of Contact Press Images, called Capa "monumental."
"The legacy of the ICP, what he did, is so tremendous, and totally changed the understanding and interest in photography in this country and beyond," Pledge said. "The history of every art form... is always shaped by incredible individuals, and in our field he's one of those rare, special, amazing people."
Capa was the younger brother of pioneering war photojournalist and Magnum founder Robert Capa, whose 1954 death shaped the younger Capa’s commitment to humanity-centered photography.
Born in Budapest in 1918, Cornell Capa moved to Paris to study medicine in 1936. By night, he worked in a commercial photo lab, developing and printing photographs shot by his brother, Henri Cartier-Bresson and David ‘Chim’ Seymour. The work convinced Capa that he could affect more people through photography than through medicine.
In 1937, Capa followed his mother to New York, where he soon began working in the darkroom of Life magazine. His first published story, shot at the 1939 Worlds Fair in New York, appeared in Picture Post. During World War II, Capa served in the Photo-Intelligence Unit of the U.S. Air Force. Afterwards, he became a staff photographer for Life, shooting notable personalities such as TV star Jack Paar, painter Grandma Moses and actor Clark Gable for the magazine’s covers.
Capa decided to remain at Life even after his brother, along with Seymour and Cartier-Bresson, formed the Magnum Photos cooperative in 1947. “One thing that Life and I agreed right from the start was that one war photographer was enough for my family,” he said later. “I was to be a photographer of peace.”
But Capa had a change of heart when his brother died in 1954 after stepping on a landmine while on assignment in Vietnam. Within weeks, he resigned from Life and joined Magnum, where morale was low after the sudden deaths of the elder Capa and Werner Bischof. As Capa explained in a cable to Magnum’s Paris office, “My decision to join is personal, firm and conditional. It is based fully on belief of importance of Magnum idea and loyalty to friends.”
When Seymour was killed while covering the Suez Crisis in 1956, Capa assumed the role as president of Magnum, a position he held until 1960.
Capa continued working as a full-time photographer until 1974, gravitating toward politics and social issues. “I have aimed to be a credible witness, one who cares about the world he inhabits,” Capa said of his work in the introduction to his self-titled 1992 book. “My aim has been to share my vision with the world.” He shot photo essays documenting the destruction of indigenous cultures in Latin America (the subject of three of his books, including Farewell to Eden), the elderly in the United States, mentally challenged children, the Six-Day War, Soviet culture, and various presidential campaigns.
One of Capa’s favorite subjects was President John F. Kennedy, whose 1960 campaign he covered for Life. Struck by the inspirational tone of President Kennedy’s 1961 inaugural address, Capa wanted to assemble what he called an “instant book” on the first hundred days of Kennedy’s presidency. For help, he enlisted eight Magnum photographers, including Elliott Erwitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marc Riboud and Burt Glinn and several writers and historians. Capa covered the White House, where he struck up a rapport with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who later became an important supporter of the International Center of Photography. The resulting book, Let Us Begin, was published on day 110 and is often cited as the first topical book of photojournalism.
In 1966, Capa teamed up with Bischof’s widow, Rosellina Bischof, and Seymour’s sister, Eileen Schneiderman, to establish the International Fund for Concerned Photography. The Fund sought to keep alive the work of his brother, Bischof and Seymour by promoting what Capa called “concerned photography.” The fund sponsored its first traveling exhibit in 1967. Aptly titled “The Concerned Photographer,” it featured the work of Bischof, Robert Capa, Seymour, Leonard Freed, Andre Kertesz, and Dan Weiner.
Recognizing that the Fund needed its own gallery, Capa opened the International Center of Photography in New York 1974. Since its founding, ICP has hosted more than 500 exhibitions and displayed the work of more than 3,000 photographers.
“ICP was an outgrowth of Cornell’s determination to see that his brother would not be forgotten and so that became his cause, and it was very much a one-man institution to begin with,” Capa’s friend and Magnum colleague John G. Morris recalled earlier this year. “He had supporters, of course … but it was his determination and his taste that established ICP.”
The demands of running the ICP left Capa with no time for his own photography. “This I had not foreseen or planned,” Capa wrote in his self-titled 1992 book, but he added that he had no regrets about it.
Capa stepped down as ICP Director in 1994, and began devoting more time to publishing and exhibiting his work. In 2000, the ICP honored its Founding Director by inaugurating the Cornell Capa Infinity Award for Distinguished Achievement in Photography.
British photojournalist Don McCullin, who met Capa in Jerusalem in 1967, was the subject of an ICP exhibition in the 1980s and received ICP's Cornell Capa Award in 2006. "To have my name associated with the great name of Capa made me really thrilled," McCullin said.
"We wish we had a Cornell Capa on this side of the Atlantic, somebody who gave photography a kind of respect on a spiritual level," McCullin said.
Anthony Bannon, director of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, N.Y., said Capa created a community and passed his concerns on to others.
"He lived 'concerned photography': through his extraordinary images, through Magnum, through the institution he created, and even more important, the community and culture embodied in the International Center of Photography," Bannon said.
Capa is pre-deceased by his wife of 61 years, Edith Capa, who died in 2001.
Funeral information
A private burial service will be held Wednesday, May 28. Capa will be burried at the Capa family grave site at Friends Cemetery in Amawalk, N.Y.
A memorial service will be held on Wednesday, September 10 at 10 a.m. at The Times Center, 242 West 41st Street between 7th & 8th Avenues in New York.
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