Robert Capa

Robert Capa was a Hungarian photographer born in Budapest, and within his time he began as a darkroom assitant and a journalist photographer; Capa left German because of the rise of Nazi and headed to Paris where he started his career of photojournalist and shared a darkroom with the Henry Cartier-Bresson, one of the greatest figure of candid photographic. He helped Bresson founding the Magum, which turned out to be the most famous world-wide photo agency with a lot of photographer members in it. The influence from masters were shown, as Capa traveled to Spain several times to document the civil war.

 Death of a Loyalist Soldier (1936)

                                 

Above is publicly considered as the most famous and representative work of Robert Capa:  Death of a Loyalist Soldier (1936) .  The shocking moment was exceptionally expressive in terms of composition.

Taken during D-Day Invasion.

His pictures taken in the extremely earthy environment have shown a great level of realism with the stunning impact of the moment, as Picture Post titled him "the greatest war photographer in the world." I think the pictures itself are typical examples of documenting reality, but more importantly, the moment he captured in most of his pieces reminds of Bresson's 'decisive moment' theory; so to speak, a decisive moment is a photographer's intuition of capturing the exact moment that could be used as a photo. Capa's body of work express the exact idea of a war photojournalist, which is documenting and recording the real war lives, but meanwhile the impact and the power in his picture is also a evidence showing his great understanding of craftsmanship in photography, that is, to capture the most representative moment from those massive moments in real life. 

Captured German Soldier  in Normandy