Portrait of Cornell Capa. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

Portrait of Cornell Capa. (Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

As an 18-year-old native of Budapest, Kornel Friedmann (1918-2008)—he would later follow his older brother, Robert Capa, and change his name—learned what he needed to know about the power of a camera from Robert’s Spanish Civil War images. “The times I grew up in became part of my conscience and my photography. I was not an artistic photographer and never became one,” he maintained. “I haven’t taken a landscape picture which was not part of a story. If I saw a peasant working in a field—which was very difficult for him to do—then I took the picture of a peasant with a field. But I didn’t take a field without the peasant.” On his approach to shooting, he once said, “The camera is an extension of yourself….Your story treatment may be subjective, but it is important to remain objective as to truth.” Cornell later went on to found the International Center of Photography in New York in 1974.

Adapted from The Great LIFE Photographers

 

Bubble Gum King Andrew J. Paris blowing bubbles with high school students. (Photo by Cornell Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

Bubble Gum King Andrew J. Paris blowing bubbles with high school students. (Photo by Cornell Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

Actress/singer Judy Garland twirling into a dance step during a performance at the Paladium. (Photo by Cornell Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

Actress/singer Judy Garland twirling into a dance step during a performance at the Paladium. (Photo by Cornell Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

Full sails during a night sailboat race, with the sun peeking over the horizon. (Photo by Cornell Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

Full sails during a night sailboat race, with the sun peeking over the horizon. (Photo by Cornell Capa/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

More Like This

An unidentified woman looks at the tag on one of many paintings in a storage room in the home of financier and art collector Chester Dale, New York, New York, 1938. (Photo by Rex Hardy/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Rex Hardy

Light pattern produced by a time exposure of the light tipped rotor blades of a grounded helicopter. (Photo by Andreas Feininger/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Andreas Feininger

Propeller turbulence photographed in stroboscopic light as water passes the torpedo. (Photo by Al Fenn/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Al Fenn

LIFE photographer Philippe Halsman poised w. camera in serious portrait. (Photo by Yale Joel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Philippe Halsman

Harvard students in lecture hall. (Photo by Arthur Griffin/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Arthur Griffin

US Army nurses arriving in the Middle East. (Photo by Bob Landry/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation) Photographer

Bob Landry