Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa

By Alex Kershaw

Book Overview

Robert Capa was arguably the finest photojournalist of the twentieth century and without doubt its greatest combat photographer-he covered every major conflict from the Spanish Civil War to the beginnings of Vietnam. An inveterate gambler who coined the dictum "if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Capa risked his life again and again, most dramatically as the only photographer landing with the first wave on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and he created some of the most enduring images ever made with a camera. But the drama in Capa's life wasn't limited to one side of the lens. Born in Budapest as Andre Freidman, Capa fled political repression and anti-Semitism as a teenager by escaping to Berlin, where he first picked up a Leica and then witnessed the rise of Hitler. By the time his images of D-Day appeared in "Life Magazine," he had become a legend, the first photographer to make his calling appear glamorous and sexy, and the model for many of the most intrepid photographers to this day. In 1947, after a decade covering war, he founded a cooperative agency-Magnum-and in the process revolutionized the industry. For the first time, photographers would retain their own copyrights and negatives, and nearly half a century later, Magnum remains the most prestigious agency of its kind. By the time he died, at just forty-one in 1954, Capa was not only the greatest adventurer in photographic history. He had become a colleague and confidant to writers Irwin Shaw, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway and director John Huston, and a seducer of several of his era's most alluring icons, including Ingrid Bergman. From Budapest in the twenties to Paris in the thirties, from post-war Hollywood to Stalin's Russia, and from New York in the fifties to Indochina, "Blood and Champagne" is a wonderfully evocative account of Capa's life and times. Based on extensive interviews with Capa's friends and contemporaries, as well as FBI and Soviet files and other previously unpublished materials, Alex Kershaw's biography is every bit as compelling as its charismatic subject.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312315643
• ISBN13: 9780312315641
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 298 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A real life tear jerker. Reads like a novel. I loved it!

I loved this book. It actually made me cry. I had no idea that Robert Capa had an affair with Ingrid Bergman (among others!) and it is brilliantly told. I have read a few of Alex Kershaw's books and the thing I really love about them is that they tell true stories in an exciting way. They really do read like novels -- rather than the usual stuffy, worthy bios that get written that only an obsessive fan of the subject could be bothered to wade through. Deserves to be made into a movie.

AS GOOD AS IT GETS

This book is a story, told to be thrilling and informative and will stand the test of time as the best book written about the trade of war photography. It should be a film because the action and character development are well plotted. And if you want to know, close up, about the great moments of the last century, then here is a ring-side seat on history in the making too. Inspiring stuff. If only there were more biographies written like this.

superb - the best account yet

A great, cinematic read - a shame that the estate did not allow photographs, but they never will. Yet this book is so vivid and esxciting that you don't notice the images not being there - you see them in your head. Really tremendous research, so much more objective than the authorized hagiographer Whelan's account, and this will one day be a movie - it just feels so right. A great, great tale told very well by Kershaw. Best bio on a photographer ever written.

The 20th Century's greatest photojournalist

The life of Robert Capa is fascinating. Born in Budapest in 1913, he was to die forty years later in Vietnam after establishing himself as one of the great photojournalists of the 20th Century. He captured on film some of the most memorable pictures in the Spanish Civil War, including the iconic "The Falling Soldier." A shameless propagandist for the Republican cause, he thought nothing of having combatants "pose" for some of his most dramatic pictures - including, many think, "The Falling Soldier." Did the republican soldier fall because he was shot or because he tripped? Was it posed? The jury is still out on that one. A Jew at a time when anti-Semitism was rife in Europe, he became a committed anti-fascist and socialist. He established the photographers' co-operative, Magnum, in order that photographers had control over their own photographs and earnings. This was not so different to the kibbutzim established in Israel by highly idealistic settlers whom he so admired. Needless to say, Capa was there to record the birth of the fledgling state of Israel in 1948 and caught on film that nation's birth pains as it battled with its Arab neighbours. War was his medium, even though he hated it. He went over in a landing craft to photograph the D-Day landings and produced some of the most memorable pictures of battle ever taken. This was despite that most of the pictures were ruined during the rushed processing in London and some of those that survived are out of focus. Capa was talented, generous, humorous, and charismatic. An inveterate gambler, he played poker with the likes of John Huston and Ernest Hemmingway, and inevitably lost. Like most people who don't care about money, money problems plagued him. Highly sexed, he counted some of the most beautiful women of the age amongst his lovers, including Ingrid Bergman. When lovers were not immediately available, he contended himself with prostitutes. Loving and loved in return, he was too much of a bohemian to commit himself to a permanent relationship. He could have been rich, but he never was. He could have happily married, but he never did. Capa's luck ran out when he went to Vietnam in 1953 to cover the war between the French and the Vietnamese and trod on a landmine. Alex Kershaw deserves credit for writing such a meticulously researched and readable biography.