Robert Capa

A monument to the power of photojournalism, Life Magazine documented 20th century America, including World War II, the Space Race, and the Civil Rights Movement.

It showcased the work of photographers like Robert Capa, Alfred Adenstadt, and Gordon Parks, leading to indelible images like the one of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square on VJ Day in 1945, and portraits of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean.

It also published Ernest Hemingway's entire novela, The Old Man and the Sea, and commissioned Norman Mailer to cover the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing.

The magazine's circulation peaked in the 1960s, reaching more than 8 million copies.

It didn't actually.

It came from a war photographer, Robert Capa, I think his name was.

And he waded out into Omaha Beach on D-Day, and he was carrying cameras instead of a rifle.

I mean, the guy was nuts.

He met a young woman there, Gerda Taro, also a Jew that fled Germany, who convinced him to take on an alias.

So he became Robert Capa.

From 1936 to 1939, they became a couple.

Capa worked in Spain, photographing the Spanish Civil War.

So I think it's, you know, suffice it to say the year has flown by perhaps like never before.

But on this day in history, if you were born on October the 22nd, you share a birthday with Robert Capa.

And he was an American photo journalist.

He took pictures during the Spanish Civil War, also World War II.

Also, Joan Fontaine, and she was, of course, an actress in Hollywood.

She was born in 1917, passed away in 2013.

Robert Capa, by the way, 1913, died in 1954.

But Joan Fontaine, born again 1917, died in 2013.

Something I see a lot in these photos that I really like is that he has people small in the frame often.

And I think, you know, a lot of us, myself included, are so influenced by that Robert Capa quote.

If your picture is not good enough, you're not close enough, which obviously has its truth to it.

But I like that.

Go ahead

... th- there's a, there's, there's a famous example like the, the, the photograph by Robert Capa of the Spanish Civil War, right? I mean, imagine this would be AI generated.

It would be basically meaningless almost.

Yes.

He led them into the Ritz, proclaimed its liberation, took command of the bar, and ordered champagne for everyone.

Soon the renowned combat photographer Robert Capa, later killed in Indochina, came driving up to the Ritz, thinking he was miles ahead of anyone else.

But he was amazed to find that Hemingway had beaten him to it.

Archie Pelkey, Hemingway's driver, was standing guard at the entrance.

And I suppose that at least gives people the coordinates of We're all too young to remember the Spanish Civil War, but we know it from Hemingway's novel.

We know it from photography, from Robert Capa.

We know it from film and various other mediums.

So it's something that kind of...

There's a very famous picture of a, of a Canadian tank in the middle of the square.

Um, there's another series of photographs taken all on the same day that it's not quite Robert Capa, but it's not far off it.

Uh, and you can see some, a wounded guy being s- being put into a little kind of little arched doorway.

That's all there still and, and they're being canalized down the main drag, the sort of main high street, which is now a sort of pedestrianized place.