He was a legend, and I have occasionally gotten part of his memory to chase the legend. With his biography in the subway or on the waiting bench, it meant a lot more than killing the time.
It is one of the only two books written by himself, with not perfect English, but excellent pictures, though "slightly out of focus". It tells about a photographer, but not about the art now called photograph, so the difference between Capa's biography and Adams' is distinct. The rough hero just told rough stories in his rough way: Days in the foxhole among the mountains between Napoles and Rome, narrow escape on Omaha Beach of Normandy, jump with the hairless paratroop onto Rhine, and the desultory love story with the girl "Pinky"... from which I figure out a true Capa, a lively man, who might also hesitate and even be scared, sometimes be helpless but rely on the very thing named luck. As the one and only photographer who brought back the images of the invasion of Normandy, he just acted as his famous words: If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.
Undoubtedly, Capa was a lucky guy, luck enough to grabble through the innumerous battle during the World War II. However, in 1954, his fortune ended, and he finished his last shoot in Vietnam, of course, also on the battlefield. As a photographer born to the battles, he deserved a good death.
The war fostered heroes, but no one but the bedlamites ever love the blood, so Capa wrote: "The road back to Spain is a long one. That ugly old woman in Madrid may be too dead to kiss, and the men who live to return may be too old to be kissed by the young ones."
Long live the peace!
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