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)
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)
