Chaim Weizmann, first President of Israel, arriving to cast his ballot,
Tel Aviv, May 14, 1950, from the lel Aviv Museum exhibition.
of actress Ingrid Bergman.
Robert Capa was born in
Hungary just before World
War I. He moved to Berlin,
where he studied political
science and earned his living
as an apprentice in a photo-
graphy lab. He then moved to
Paris and changed his name,
which had been Andre Fried-
mann. Instead, he invented
for himself the identity of an
American photographer —
Robert Capa — and started to
earn recognition for his
photographs from the Span-
ish Civil War. In 1954, he was
killed in Indochina after step-
ping on a mine.
He photographed in a com-
pletely spontaneous and
unpretentious, yet intimate
and realistic, way, piercing to
the essence of people and
situations.
Bar-Am says Capa's great-
ness cannot be analyzed. "I
think he touched something
which had to do with a
certain personality that
Hemingway, Picasso and
Steinbeck realized before I
did. The fact that we found so
much rich material which did
not have to do with war
proved that my gut reaction
was right — Capa was not
just a 'war photographer' but
a 'human photographer,' Bar-
Am says.
Shaar-Haaliya Immigrant
Camp, winter 1949-50. All
photos from the exhbition,
"Robert Capa—Stormy Years:
1931-1954," at Tel Aviv
Museum.
Israel, 1949, from the Tel Aviv Museum exhibit of Robert Capa's
photographs.
❑
Helena Flusfeder is a writer
in Israel.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
69