(Cornell Capa, Bolshoi Ballet School,Moscow, 1958 )

Cornell Capa, photographer, editor, and founding director of the International Center of Photography, died in New York on Friday, May 23. “The world has lost a great photographer and a great humanitarian; the world of photography has lost its greatest friend and champion,” said Willis E. Hartshorn, ICP Ehrenkranz Director. Capa, who founded ICP in 1974, coined the term “concerned photographer.” His own photographs remained true to that mission; his respect for humanity and his desire to help better the world through photography was reflected in his images of missionaries and poverty in Latin America, midcentury politics in the United States, old age, and the lyricism of the Bolshoi Ballet.

Capa was born Kornel Friedmann on April 10, 1918, in Budapest. Graduating from the Imre Madach Gymnasium in 1936, he intended to study medicine and joined his brother André (Robert Capa) in Paris. Shortly thereafter, he began printing his brother’s photographs, as well as those by Chim (David Seymour), and Henri Cartier-Bresson. After moving to New York City in 1937, he got a job in the darkroom of the Pix photo agency, which represented Robert Capa, and the following year he began working in Life magazine’s darkroom, where he met many leading photojournalists and was inspired by their work. In 1939, he published his first photo story, on the New York World’s Fair, in the British magazine Picture Post. In 1944, he became an American citizen and officially changed his name to Cornell Capa. After becoming a Life staff photographer in 1946, he worked first on assignments throughout the United States and subsequently in England. In 1953, Capa made his first trip to Latin America, and through the rest of the decade and the next traveled and photographed extensively. Capa is predeceased by his wife of sixty-one years, Edith Capa, and by his brother, Robert.