The collection
The exhibition Robert Capa, the Photojournalist covers the whole of Capa’s career, from his first commissioned photograph of Trotsky’s speech to his last shot in the Indochina War.
The exhibition is based on the nine hundred and thirty-seven enlargements of the Master’s Set III series of Robert Capa’s life’s work, acquired by the Hungarian State in 2008, which were made in the 1990s. These photographs have been selected by his brother Cornell Capa and the photography historian Richard Whelan, Robert Capa’s first monographer, from the nearly 70,000 negatives left behind by Capa. They decided that only three sets of enlargements of these negatives could be made in this size: one set is housed at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York,another at the Fuji Art Museum in Tokyo, and the third set is in the custody of the Robert Capa Center for Contemporary Photography in Budapest, Hungary. The Hungarian collection also includes a Vintage Collection of 48 original photographs.
The Center’s main task is the care, presentation, and development of the Robert Capa Collection in Hungary.
The images can be recognized by the dry stamp imitating Capa’s signature, which can be seen under the enlargements on the right. The most representative images of Capa’s oeuvre, taken between 1932 and 1954, are visual documents of exceptional quality of many events of world historical importance in the 20th century. At the same time, the photographs also trace the development of Endre Friedmann’s visual imagination and the “birth of Robert Capa”.
After his tragic, untimely death, his brother Cornell Capa worked consciously to preserve his world-famous brother’s reputation: without his continued work, we would not know so much about Robert Capa. The International Center of Photography (ICP), founded by Cornell Capa in 1974, is based in New York City, where his legacy is preserved and researched. The International Centre of Photography is the world’s leading institution for photography and visual culture. Robert Capa is credited with the birth of the modern photojournalism. And Cornell Capa, in addition to founding the ICP, is credited with raising awareness that the images of photojournalists are not only important in current affairs, but have an artistic value beyond that.
The Master Collection, acquired in 2008, was first exhibited at the Hungarian National Museum (Department of Historical Photography), where a small selection was shown to the Hungarian public in spring 2009, followed by a major exhibition at the Ludwig Museum in the summer. For almost a decade, the academic staff of the Hungarian National Museum , working on the basis of various curatorial concepts, presented the collection’s images abroad and in several Hungarian cities with great success.
And in 2023 the permanent exhibition Robert Capa, the Photojournalist opened!
List of the Master’s set III, the images cannot be used in any manner.
