Cornell Capa

Cornell Capa was born Cornell Friedmann to a Jewish family in Budapest in 1918. In 1936, he moved to Paris, where his brother Andre (Robert Capa) was working as a photojournalist. He worked as his brother’s printer until 1937, then moved to New York to join the new Pix photo agency. In 1938, he began working in the Life darkroom. His first photo story, a piece on the New York World’s Fair, was published in Picture Post soon after.

In 1946, after serving in the US Air Force, Cornell became a Life staff photographer. He joined Magnum following his brother’s death in 1954. After David “Chim” Seymour’s death in Suez in 1956, Capa took over as president of Magnum, a post he held until 1960. In 1954, Capa made an empathetic, pioneering study of children with special needs. He also covered other social issues such as old age in America and explored his own religious tradition.

While working for Life, Capa made the first of several Latin American trips. These continued through the 1970s and culminated in three books, among them Farewell to Eden (1964), a study of the destruction of indigenous Amazon cultures.

Capa covered the electoral campaigns of John and Robert Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson and Nelson Rockefeller, among others. His 1969 book, New Breed on Wall Street, was a landmark study of a generation of ruthless young entrepreneurs keen on making money and spending it fast.

In 1974, Capa founded New York City’s influential International Center of Photography, and for two decades he dedicated much of his considerable energy to serving as its director. Cornell Capa died in New York on May 23, 2008.