Being a Jew, would later cause him to leave his country in 1933, and move
to Paris. He got his start in photography when he worked his way through
college in a lab of Ullstein magazine group, that would later publish his
first picture of Leon Trotsky in 1931, at his Copenhagen meeting. While
in Paris, he joined the founding agency Alliance Photo. There he meet Gerda
Taro, who would help him become “Robert Capa”, the name under which he
sold his prints. He had the opportunity to meet and photograph famous men
such as: Picasso, Hemmingway, David “Chim”, Seymour and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, he had weekly coverage of
it in Vu, Regards, Ce Soir, Weekly Illustrated and Life; and shot newsreels
for March of Time. He moved to New York in 1939, and then would take on
World War II, escpecially the landing of the American troops on Omaha Beach,
the Liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge, as Life and Collier’s
correspondent in Europe. In 1947, he was one of the five founders
of Magnum Photos, and would travel to Russia and Israel from 1947-1950,
while doing a few stories for Holiday. In 1951, he became the president
of Magnum. While in Tahi-Bink, Indochina, Robert Capa stepped on a land
mind and died on May 25, 1954. He would be awarded the War Cross with Palm
by the French army. The award “Robert Capa Gold Medal Award” was established
in 1955 to reward others with exceptional professional merit. Even though
his life was short, he was able to memorialize these famous events in history.
His life was exciting and always on the move, being able to give others
a chance to see what war and hardship was truly about. 
Roberta Capa took the famous picture of a Loyalist soldier being shot in mid air during the Spanish Civil War in 1936. The picture shows the pain and horror, as one is able to directly look onto death. The main is thrown off guard and balance as the momentum of the bullet pierces through his body. It was from this single picture that Capa’s name became famous. He published other Civil War pictures, but this single frame sums up all that the war represented: death alone. There has been some controversy as to the authenticity of the picture. A corresponded of the Daily Express, O.D. Gallagher claims that the picture was staged, but others who know Capa and by its trueness. The picture was first published in the October 1936 issue of the French picture magazine VU. The picture has become an icon for the war, and the idea of capturing time in a picture can clearly be shown with this one famous shot.
