A Paris exhibition showcases how the Magnum agency founder documented not just battle but also victims of war
I
t is not often that you get to see a war photographer at work. Certainly not one who more or less defines our idea of the profession as it exists today, is widely considered to be its greatest practitioner and has been dead for more than 70 years.
But as part of its new retrospective, the Museum of the Liberation of Paris has produced a remarkable candid film of Robert Capa on the job. He is largely unaware he is being filmed and the cameramen mostly do not know they are filming him.
The researchers started with the 30 contact sheets – 24 rolls of film, about 500 photographs – the Hungarian-born photographer took on 25 and 26 August 1944, when the French capital was freed from four gruelling years of German occupation.
