Capa Quotes & Sayings

Images at their passionate and truthful best are as powerful as words can ever be. If they alone cannot bring change, they can at least provide and understanding mirror of man's actions, thereby sharpening human awareness and awakening conscience. — Cornell Capa

The Concerned Photographer produces images in which genuine human feeling predominates over commercial cynicism or disinterested formalism. — Cornell Capa

I love the Dutch impressionists - Vermeer, Rembrandt. What they were able to do with light was astonishing. As for photographers, I think mostly of the Hungarians: Robert Capa, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Jozsef Pesci. In fact, I have one of his photographs hanging in my house. — Vilmos Zsigmond

If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough. — Robert Capa

Gods, I love this place," Locke said, drumming his fingers against his thighs. "Sometimes I think this whole city was put here simply because the gods must adore crime. Pickpockets rob the common folk, merchants rob anyone they can dupe, Capa Barsavi robs the robbers and the common folk, the lesser nobles rob nearly everyone, and Duke Nicovante occasionally runs off with his army and robs the shit out of Tal Verarr or Jerem, not to mention what he does to his own nobles and his common folk. — Scott Lynch

The pictures are there, and you just take them. — Robert Capa

He withdrew then, leaving [him] standing in the bloody morning sunlight, leaving him all alone at the heart of his fortress, for the second time, with nothing but a corpse for company. — Scott Lynch

For a war correspondent to miss an invasion is like refusing a date with Lana Turner. — Robert Capa

People beleived that the most devastating part of a war are the corpses with their guts out in the open, the puddles of blood, and all that you can capture at first glance. But sometimes the horror is off to the side, in the lost look on the face of a woman who's just been raped, as she limps away alone within the ruins, trying to keep her head down. Gerda and Capa were not aware of this yet. They were too young. And that was their first conflict. They still believed war had its romantic side. — Susana Fortes

It's not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one. — Robert Capa

The [concentration camps] were swarming with photographers and every new picture of horror served only to diminish the total effect. Now, for a short day, everyone will see what happened to those poor devils in those camps; tomorrow, very few will care what happens to them in the future. — Robert Capa

The desire of any war photographer is to be put out of business. — Robert Capa

Like people and let them know it. — Robert Capa

With all the arguments and discussions about the Vietnam War, what did the visual image do? It ended the war. — Cornell Capa

In a war, you must hate somebody or love somebody; you must have a position or you cannot stand what goes on. — Robert Capa

The war is like an actress who is getting old. It's less and less photogenic and more and more dangerous. (1944) — Robert Capa

Q: Do you really distance yourself from your subject? I mean, what would you do if you were presented with a young girl burning to death?
A: About 1/60 at f5.6. — Robert Capa

The camera is an extension of yourself ... Your story treatment may be subjective, but it is important to remain objective as to truth. — Cornell Capa

I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life. — Robert Capa

This war is like an actress who is getting old. It is less and less photogenic and more and more dangerous. — Robert Capa

What makes Capa a great photo journalist?" asks a reporter covering a 1998 retrospective of his work. "We see his own appetite for life, his mix of urgency with compassion . . . the artistic thrust of his photography always had more to do with its emotional pitch, which remained genuine and deeply felt." Or, in Capa's own words, a great picture "is a cut out of the whole event which will show more of the real truth of the affair to some one who was not there than the whole scene. — John Steinbeck

The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda. — Robert Capa

I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave. — Robert Capa

What's the point of getting killed if you've got the wrong exposure? — Robert Capa

I would say that the war correspondent gets more drinks, more girls, better pay, and greater freedom than the soldier, but at this stage of the game, having the freedom to choose his spot and being allowed to be a coward and not be executed for it is his torture. — Robert Capa

One thing that Life and I agreed right from the start was that one war photographer was enough for my family; I was to be a photographer of peace. — Cornell Capa

The idea that any photography can't be personal is madness! I see something; it goes through my eye, brain, heart, guts; I choose the subject. What could be more personal than that? — Cornell Capa

The war correspondent has his stake - his life - in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute. — Robert Capa

If your father says 'Bark like a dog,' I say 'What breed, Your Honor? — Scott Lynch

It's not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian. — Robert Capa

Photography has the capacity to provide images of man and his environment that are both works of art and moments in history. — Cornell Capa

The war photographer's most fervent wish is for unemployment — Robert Capa

[Robert] Capa: He was a good friend and a great and very brave photographer. It is bad luck for everybody that the percentages caught up with him. It is especially bad for Capa. (On Capa's death in Vietnam, May, 27, 1954) — Ernest Hemingway,

Working at the scene of the action, I have adopted Robert Capa's saying: 'If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough.' But in retrospect I add a corollary: if you're too close to events, you lose perspective. — Micha Bar-Am

You don't have to pose your camera. The pictures are there, and you just take them. The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda. (On the Spanish Civil War, 1937) — Robert Capa

I am not an artist, and I never intended to be one. I hope I have made some good photographs, but what I really hope is that I have done some good photo stories with memorable images that make a point, and, perhaps, even make a difference. — Cornell Capa