The world’s first permanent exhibition of Capa’s oeuvre opened in Budapest (video)

2023-06-18 09:00:49

A Capa Center It was created in 2013 partly with the aim of presenting the Robert Capa collection purchased by the Hungarian state in 2008, recalled the director of the institution at the press presentation of the exhibition on Tuesday.

Orsolya Kőrösi reminded that

only three of the series covering the entire career of Robert Capa, selected by the younger brother of the famous photographer Cornell Capa and his monographer Richard Whelan; along with New York and Tokyo, Budapest became the most important custodian of the Capa legacy.

The design of the exhibition space for the presentation of the Master Collection, which contains 937 copies, began in 2017; the government contributed a total of HUF 813 million to the renovation and construction of the exhibition in 2017 and 2021, he said.

The world’s first permanent exhibition presenting the work of the world-renowned photographer Robert Capa, entitled Correspondent, at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Budapest on June 13, 2023, the day of the opening

Photo: Tamás Kovács / Source: MTI

According to him, the Art Nouveau cinema created in the building in 1912 (which previously housed the Tinód cinema and then the Budapest Chamber Theater) is home to the Capa life exhibition after a comprehensive transformation.

Visitors can see 137 Robert Capa photos (these will be changed from time to time for reasons of protection of artefacts), and another 400 shots can be seen in projected form.

Speaking about the structure of the two-story exhibition, curator Gabriella Csizek said that the image spaces are complemented by information spaces that present the life path, personality and contemporary photography of the photographer born Endre Friedmann through interactive interfaces, film recordings, radio interviews, projected images and documents.

The design of the exhibition space containing 937 copies began in 2017; in 2017 and 2021, the government contributed a total of HUF 813 million to the creation of the exhibition
Photo: Tamás Kovács / Source: MTI

The Robert Capa photos follow each other in chronological order, processed according to the themes defined by the oeuvre.

This route is not only a walk in time and space, but also a kind of inner journey, which follows the artistic and personal fulfillment of Capa, who started from Budapest in the early 1920s, then traveled and worked on almost every continent, and then his tragically sudden end.

After the early works, the visitor can learn about the iconic Capa pictures made during the Spanish Civil War (including the world-famous The death of the militiaman), then recorded during the Sino-Japanese War and the battlefields of the Second World War, for example during the Normandy landings.