15 Facts About Cornell Capa

Cornell Capa was a Hungarian-American photographer, member of Magnum Photos, photo curator, and the younger brother of photo-journalist and war photographer Robert Capa.

In 1937, Cornell Capa moved to New York City to work in the Life magazine darkroom.

The many covers that Cornell Capa shot for the magazine included portraits of television personality Jack Paar, painter Grandma Moses, and Clark Gable.

In May 1954, his brother Robert Cornell Capa was killed by a landmine, while covering the final years of the First Indochina War.

Cornell Capa joined Magnum Photos, the photo agency co-founded by Robert, the same year.

For Magnum, Cornell Capa covered the Soviet Union, Israeli Six-Day War, and American politicians.

Cornell Capa served for many years as the director of the Center.

Cornell Capa has published several collections of his photographs including JFK for President, a series of photographs of the 1960 presidential campaign that he took for Life magazine.

Cornell Capa produced a book documenting the first 100 days of the Kennedy presidency, with fellow Magnum photographers including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Elliott Erwitt.

Cornell Capa died in New York City on May 23,2008, of natural causes at the age of 90.

Cornell Capa's work is often considered quite eclectic, capturing moments as large of scale as wars to everyday subtle gestures of life, from the Six-Day War to children playing stick ball in the street.

In 1968 Cornell Capa published a book called The Concerned Photographer.

Cornell Capa took great interest in politics and documented the presidential campaigns of Adlai Stevenson and John F Kennedy, along with Kennedy's first one hundred days in office.

Cornell Capa wrote forewords to several collections of his brother's photographs and was known to be protective of Robert Cornell Capa's memory and reputation.

For example, when Robert Capa's famous image of a falling Spanish soldier during the Spanish Civil War was claimed to be a fake and not taken at the moment of death, Cornell Capa entered into a long battle to establish the legitimacy of the photograph, including tracking down the name of the soldier and his date of death.