Career
Born Endre Friedmann to Dezső and Júlia Friedmann on October 22, 1913 in Budapest, Hungary. Deciding that there was little future under the regime in Hungary, he left home at 18.
Capa originally wanted to be a writer; however, he found work in photography in Berlin and grew to love the art. In 1933, he moved from Germany to France because of the rise of Nazism, but found it difficult to find work there as a freelance journalist. He adopted the name "Robert Capa" around this time—in fact cápa ("shark") was his nickname in school and also he felt that it would be recognizable and American-sounding since it was similar to that of film director Frank Capra. He found it easier to sell his photos under the newly adopted "American" sounding name and over a period of time gradually assumed the persona of Robert Capa (with the help of his current girlfriend Gerda Taro, who acted as an intermediary between himself and those who purchased the photos taken by the "great American photographer, Robert Capa"). Capa's first published photograph was that of Leon Trotsky making a speech in Copenhagen on "The Meaning of the Russian Revolution" in 1932.
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.”
—Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)