Submitted by Al …
(Adapted from The Encyclopedia of Photography ©1963)
Cornell Capa
In the following statement, Cornell Capa, an internationally known magazine photographer and leading member of Magnum, speaks of the origins and rationale of his work:
‘I am the younger brother of the late Robert Capa, and my photography is very much in the tradition of his work. He, in the company of other early pioneers, has worked toward the development of the form of the picture story and lent it his intelligence, compassion and courage. His life’s work remains a document of war’s inhumanity to Mankind.
I am a photojournalist, because I believe in the power of the camera to communicate ideas through connecting images which are then made universally understandable. This is why my work is concerned with the world of humans – their struggles, foibles, and aspirations.
The camera is an extension of myself, through which I can relate what I see and how I see it. It can be a powerful witness, an instrument for good or evil. I intend to use it to spread understanding of each other, within all my power of understanding and basic fairness, which does not mean, objectively.
It is my hope to contribute in a small measure to a world of more understanding, which then will be a better world.’
Robert Capa
The effects of Capa’s efforts to increase understanding are to be seen in his magazine picture stories and in his books: Retarded Children Can Be Helped (with Maya Pines), The Savage My Kinsman (with Elizabeth Elliot), and Let Us Begin, a remarkable chronicle of President Kennedy’s first one hundred days, done by Capa and other Magnum photographers.
Despite Cornell Capa’s present reputation, for quite a number of years he did not take pictures at all. He began in Paris around 1936, working in a professional studio. He mastered lighting and became highly proficient technically. At night he went to work in a hotel darkroom processing and printing the work of other photographers; among them his brother Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and David Seymour. At the same time his understanding of the picture story as a form of communication deepened and broadened.
In 1946, Cornell Capa joined Life Magazine staff. His own individual approach began to blossom while he was working for Life’s London office in the early 1950s. He did a strong and exceedingly humourous story on the spit-and-polish, ramrod traditions of the Queen’s Guards Regiment. Another significant English story of Capa’s was his exploration of the Winchester Preparatory School for Boys.
Gradually the combination of the meaningful, the humourous, and the deeply human began to pervade Capa’s stories. In a perceptive story, Old Age (Life, 1960), he chronicled the everyday life of an aging grandmother in a small-town American family.
About this type of assignment, Capa comments: ‘I like to move in from the periphery, from being an observer, and become a participant. I became a friend of the family while I was there. I was able to take my pictures, not because I blended into the wall, but because I blended in with them. It is not because they acted it out for me, it is because they were able to live with me there.’
The approach came to a unique fruition in Capa’s collaboration with Elizabeth Elliott in the book The Savage My Kinsman. The book describes the author’s life (she is a missionary to the Auca Indians of Ecuador) with the very same tribe that killed her husband the year before. The photographs are by Cornell Capa and Elizabeth Elliott, as explained in the forward: ‘I was able to convince her of the value of the camera as an irreplaceable means of communication and expression. I explained the camera as a simple mechanical instrument, easy to operate. All she had to do was use it as an extension of her eyes, to photograph the subjects she cared about: her daughter and her Indians.’
Capa has repeated this remarkable experience with other people, ‘I like to work with people and coordinate them, integrate them into a project. The story has to be made the best it can be, however many people are needed for the right things to happen. I’d rather see a powerful combination of text and pictures than insist on the purity of the photograph.’
It is the more meaningful integration of text and pictures on subjects that can be of permanent use to mankind which most intrigues Cornell Capa. He believes this direction to be worth a lifetime of photographic exploration.
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