Robert Capa - Politics

Politics

As a teenager, Capa was drawn to the Munkakör (Work Circle), a group of socialist and avant-garde artists, photographers, and intellectuals centered around Budapest and he was a regular participant in the demonstrations against the repressive regime of Miklós Horthy. In 1931, just before his first photo would be published, Capa was arrested by the Hungarian secret police, beaten, and jailed for his radical political activity; a police official’s wife—who happened to know his family—won Capa’s release on the condition that he would leave Hungary immediately.

The Boston Review described Capa as "a leftist, and a democrat—he was passionately pro-Loyalist and passionately anti-fascist ..." During the Spanish Civil War Capa travelled with and photographed the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), under which George Orwell served, which resulted in his best-known photograph.

The British magazine Picture Post ran his photos from Spain accompanied by a portrait of Capa, in profile, with the simple description: "He is a passionate democrat, and he lives to take photographs."

Read more about this topic:  Robert Capa

Famous quotes containing the word politics:

    The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.
    Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)

    The word “revolution” itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the “revolution” of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the “revolving door” of a politics which has “liberated” women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics. Change is the essence politics is supposed to be the means to bring into being.
    Kate Millett (b. 1934)