Cornell Capa: Photographer of the week

"One thing that Life and I agreed right from the start was that one war photographer was enough for my family; I was to be a photographer of peace."

Cornell Capa was born Cornell Friedmann to a Jewish family in Budapest. 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. Soon his first photo story - on the New York World's Fair - was published in Picture Post.In 1946, after serving in the US Air Force, Cornell became a Life staff photographer. After his brother's death in 1954, he joined Magnum, and when David 'Chim' Seymour died in Suez in 1956 Capa took over as president of Magnum, a post he held until 1960.In 1974 Capa founded New York City's influential International Center of Photography, to which for many years he dedicated much of his considerable energy as its director.
Cornell Capa coined the term “concerned photographer.” His own photographs throughout his lifetime remained true to that mission. His respect for humanity and his desire to help better the world through photography was reflected in his images. He photographed missionaries and poverty in Latin America, and covered politics throughout the United States, including his classic studies of Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy. The lyricism of the Bolshoi Ballet, and the quirkiness of American and British life found their way to Capa’s camera; and his documentation of old age in America showed us that photographic images have the power to change the way we look at the world.

photographer of the week: Hiroji Kubota

"I love beautiful things, and I want to make pictures that lift people's spirits. I see the giving and receiving of photographs as something beautiful and personal."

After graduating in political science from Tokyo's University of Waseda in 1962, Kubota moved to the US, settling in Chicago, where he continued photographing while supporting himself by working in a Japanese catering business.

He became a freelance photographer in 1965, and his first assignment for the UK newspaper The Times was to Jackson Pollock's grave in East Hampton. In 1968 Kubota returned to live in Japan, where his work was recognized with a Publishing Culture Award from Kodansha in 1970. The next year he became a Magnum associate.

Kubota witnessed the fall of Saigon in 1975, refocusing his attention on Asia. It took him several years to get permission to photograph in China. Finally, between 1979 and 1984, Kubota embarked on a 1,000-day tour, during which he made more than 200,000 photographs. The book and exhibit, China, appeared in 1985.

Kubota's awards in Japan include the Nendo Sho (Annual Award) of the Japanese Photographic Society (1982), and the Mainichi Art Prize (1983). He has photographed most of the Asian continent for his book Out of the East, published in 1997, which led to a two-year project, in turn resulting in the book Can We Feed Ourselves?

Kubota has had solo shows in Tokyo, Osaka, Beijing, New York, Washington, Rome, London, Vienna, Paris and many other cities. He has just completed Japan, a book on his homeland and the country where he continues to be based.

BE