Does it matter whether Robert Capas famous picture was staged?
More significant is that it changed the role of photography forever. Robert Capa came into the world, in Budapest in 1913, with an extra little finger on his left hand (which was easily removed), a mop of black gypsy hair (never tamed) and the name Andre Friedmann. His mother was strong, his father was weak: he was a tailor, more interested in wearing flashy clothes than in selling them, and a gambler. As Alex Kershaw’s new biography describes, Andre Friedmann grew up a poor student in a turbulent world. Hungary lost two-thirds of its land after World War I, and under the new regime there were attacks on Jews and radicals, Friedmann’s support groups. It is not hard to think that the happy-go-lucky guy might have become even more of a ladies’ man and a gambler were it not for that small thing that he found to organise his life – a camera, a girl called Leica. As soon as he had acquired skill with the Leica, the world provided him with a brimming subject: the Spanish Civil War, and it ma
