Robert Capa [antikvár]

TOWARD PHOTO-HISTORY Legendary - how to avoid this word so often used to describe Robert Capa? Like that of the actor, the profession of pursuer of pictures, and facts, is fraught with an onerous and sometimes demeaning mythology. With the exception of Moliere, however, few actors have died onstage, whereas countless photographers - Capa foremost - have given their lives in an effort to get a firmer grip on the truth. The legend of the founder of Magnum Photos is more than a tale of office girls and shutterbugs. We who have gone the same route, who have "followed the leader" (like Bras-sens's little pony), have made of this story an inspiring myth. After all, why shouldn't we dare what he dared? Why shouldn't we ourselves try to capture what he captured - in Spain, China, and Sicily, during the Normandy invasion, and in Indochina?. Of course, the man with the camera in his hand faces far more rigorous imperatives than the pen-pusher. His highest credo - "being there" - is both more tyrannical and more all-consuming than ours. He must get closer, ever closer and indeed, Capa's greatest scoops imply a dizzying proximity. (It's no accident that the two people dearest to him, Gerda Taro and David "Chim" Seymour, died exactly as he did.) For those of us hidng behind our little pads and pencils. Bob Capa's example has proved both thrilling and seductive. He spurred us forward, prodded us ever onward toward the truth. This man, whom I never had the pleasure of knowing personally - my assignments in Indochina came before and after his tragic death in 1954 - has been a compelling motivator, not only in my life but in the lives of so many others, perhaps even more after his death than during his lifetime. André Friedmann was born in 1911, to a middle-class family in Budapest (I wonder if we've sufficiently acknow-