Capa comes to India

The legendary photographer's work is on show here for possibly the first time -but the curation is half-hearted

- Vangmayi Parakala

There are two unforgettable stories from among many-about the Hungarian-American war photographer and Magnum Photos co-founder Robert Capa, whose photographs are currently on show at the Museo Camera in Gurugram, Haryana.

The first is that Robert Capa did not actually exist. In 1933, as Hitler starts becoming more powerful, Endre Friedmann, a Jewish Budapest-born and Berlin-based journalism dropout, darkroom assistant and fledgling photographer, finds himself having to flee to Paris. Once he gets there, however, he has to start over. Through these initial struggles, he meets Gerta Pohorylle, who eventually becomes his lover and business partner. As he teaches her the basics of photography, they figure that if Friedmann were American, he would be getting paid a lot more for his photographs. They make up the "successful" Robert Capa, an American photographer under whose name Friedmann starts selling his photographs. When he's found out, to get out of trouble Friedmann just assumes the identity.

Through his career as Capa, he would go on to shoot some of the most iconic images of conflict from five big wars, including the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II, the First Arab-Israeli War and the French Indochina War. His images would humanise conflict, bring its gritty and grainy details into homes, and sway public sentiment.