In 1938, the now famous Capa went to China
with filmmaker Joris Ivens to photograph another
war: the Japanese invasion of China. Capa covered
the Sino-Japanese war for six months and once
again produced graphic, straightforward visual tes-
timonies of war and its effects on a local populace.
His sought-after images appeared inLifeand else-
where, and his photographs documenting the Japa-
nese aerial bombardment of the Chinese city of
Hankou rank among his most successful.
Upon his return to Europe, Capa worked on a
number of miscellaneous assignments, most nota-
bly in a piece on orphanages in Biarritz, France, an
in-depth assignment on the Tour de France bicycle
race for the French magazineMatch, and a series
of stories documenting the working class and the
unemployed in and around Antwerp, Belgium. In
1940, he spent several months in Mexico covering
the political rallies and usually violent protests
leading up to that country’s presidential elections.
With the outbreak of World War II, Capa worked
on a number of assignments devoted to the Allied
war effort for news outlets on both sides of the
Atlantic, but worked primarily in England for
Collier’smagazine and then as a European corre-
spondent for Life.His photographs of London
during the Blitz accompanied the text for a book
published in 1941 titledThe Battle of Waterloo
Bridge, which documented the resiliency of work-
ing-class Londoners during and after the extensive
aerial bombardment of the city by the Germans.
During the late spring and summer of 1943, Capa
covered the Allied campaigns in North Africa and
Sicily led by General George S. Patton, and he
spent the remainder of that year documenting the
Allied advance at various battlefronts throughout
mainland Italy, including the liberation of Naples
and the fighting around Anzio. On the historic
occasion of D-Day on June 6, 1944, Capa accom-
panied the first wave of American troops landing
at Omaha Beach on the Normandy coast of
France, snapping some of the most memorable
and iconic photographs of World War II while in
the water and on the beach during the chaotic
opening moments of the liberation of France. To
document the Allied landing at Omaha Beach,
Capa had with him two 35-mm Contax cameras
and a Rolleiflex, and while a majority of the
photographs for which he risked his life that day
were accidentally either destroyed or damaged in a
darkroom mishap back in England, those that sur-
vived—including his famous image of soldiers
wading ashore from their landing crafts—appeared
inLife magazine and were hailed as the finest
taken of the invasion.
From the beaches of Normandy, Capa went on
to cover the Allied troop advances through to the
liberation of Paris in August 1944, for which he
accompanied the French 2nd Armored Division
into the capitol. In Paris, he documented the
delirium of the newly liberated inhabitants and
their assistance with the elimination of pockets of
German resistance by the liberating forces. After
the liberation of Paris, Capa went on to cover the
fighting that winter in the Ardennes—which would
become known as the Battle of the Bulge—where
he took a number of dramatic photographs of
German soldiers surrendering to allied forces. He
also parachuted into Germany with American
troops in 1945 and was on hand to photograph
the key Allied victories at Leipzig, Nuremberg, and
Berlin. As with every conflict that he covered,
during World War II Capa focused his lens not
only on soldiers and the front-line action, but also
on the local population and the war’s impact on
them, often capturing telling moments in the
expressions and gestures of those around him.
Throughout the war, Capa’s images of both
soldiers and civilians appeared regularly inLife
andCollier’sin America and in theWeekly Illu-
stratedin Britain. For his efforts during the war,
Capa, along with 20 other World War II corre-
spondents, received the United States Medal of
Freedom in 1947.
Soon after the war, Capa became an American
citizen and in 1946 spent several months in Los
Angeles, California, during which time he wrote
his war memoirs, titledSlightly Out of Focus,and
briefly aspired to become a director-producer. In
1947, he collaborated with his old friends Cartier-
Bresson and Szymin (who now went by David
Seymour and his nom-de-plume ‘‘Chim’’), as well
as George Rodger and William Vandivert to found
the international photographic agency Magnum
Photos. Living primarily in Paris by now, Capa
devoted himself to Magnum, overseeing operations
at the cooperative’s New York and Paris offices
and assisting the agency’s young photographers.
In addition to running Magnum, during the late
1940s Capa collaborated on a number of travel
books, including one documenting a month-long
trip that he had taken with John Steinbeck to the
Soviet Union in 1947. Also, in May 1948 Capa
took the first of three trips to Israel, where he
covered the fledgling country’s declaration of inde-
pendence and the ensuing war with its Arab neigh-
bors forIllustrated.On his two subsequent trips to
Israel, Capa concentrated his lens on the flood of
refugees arriving in and around Haifa, photo-
graphing their living conditions in the immigrantCAPA, ROBERT