A groundbreaking exhibition titled 'Capa in Color' has recently premiered at the International Center of Photography, presenting Robert Capa's color photographs to the European public for the first time. The traveling exhibition showcases over 150 contemporary color prints by the legendary photojournalist, along with personal papers and magazine tearsheets from original publications, revealing an unexpected aspect of Capa's career that has been largely overlooked in posthumous books and exhibitions.

While Robert Capa (1913-1954) is recognized almost exclusively as a master of black-and-white photography, he actually began working regularly with color film in 1941 and continued using it until his death in 1954. The majority of these color images have never been printed or seen in any form, despite some appearing in magazines of the era. Organized by Cynthia Young, curator of Capa Collections at the International Center of Photography, the exhibition demonstrates how Capa embraced color photography and seamlessly integrated it into his photojournalistic work during the 1940s and 1950s.

Robert Capa's reputation as one of history's most notable photojournalists is well established. Born Endre Ernő Friedmann in Budapest and naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1946, he was dubbed 'The Greatest War Photographer in the World' by Picture Post in a late 1938 publication featuring his Spanish Civil War photographs. During World War II, he worked extensively for magazines such as Collier's and Life, capturing both war preparation and its devastating aftermath. His most famous images came to symbolize the brutality and valor of war, fundamentally changing public perception and setting new standards for war photography.

Capa's interest in color photography began remarkably early in his career. On July 27, 1938, while covering the Sino-Japanese war in China for eight months, he wrote to a friend at his New York agency: 'send 12 rolls of Kodachrome with all instructions; Send it Via Clipper because I have an idea for Life.' Although no color film from China survives except for four prints published in the October 17, 1938, issue of Life magazine, this correspondence clearly shows Capa was interested in color photography even before it was widely adopted by other photojournalists.

By 1941, Capa had begun incorporating color into his regular work, photographing Ernest Hemingway at his home in Sun Valley, Idaho, and creating a color story about crossing the Atlantic on a freighter with an Allied convoy, which was published in the Saturday Evening Post. While Capa is best known for his iconic black-and-white D-Day images, he also used color film sporadically during World War II, most notably to photograph American troops and the French Camel Corps in Tunisia in 1943.

Capa's use of color film dramatically expanded in his postwar magazine stories for publications such as Holiday (USA), Ladies' Home Journal (USA), Illustrated (UK), and Epoca (Italy). These photographs, which until now have only been seen in magazine spreads, brought the lives of ordinary and exotic people from around the world to both American and European readers. This work was markedly different from the war reportage that had dominated Capa's early career, showcasing his versatility as a photographer.

The technical ability and emotional engagement that characterized Capa's prewar black-and-white stories enabled him to move fluidly between black-and-white and color film, using color to complement his subjects effectively. His early color stories included photographs of Moscow's Red Square from a 1947 trip to the USSR with writer John Steinbeck, as well as images of refugees and new settlers in Israel during 1949-50. For the Generation X project, Capa traveled to Oslo, northern Norway, Essen, and Paris to capture the lives and dreams of youth born before the war.

Capa's color photographs also provided readers glimpses into more glamorous lifestyles that depended on the allure and seduction of color photography. In 1950, he covered fashionable ski resorts in the Swiss, Austrian, and French Alps, as well as the stylish French resorts of Biarritz and Deauville for the burgeoning travel market that Holiday magazine capitalized on. He even experimented with fashion photography along the banks of the Seine River and on the Place Vendôme in Paris.

The photographer also documented actors and directors on European film sets using color film, including Ingrid Bergman in Roberto Rossellini's 'Viaggio in Italia,' Orson Welles in 'Black Rose,' and John Huston's 'Moulin Rouge.' His additional portraiture work during this period included striking color images of Pablo Picasso on the beach near Vallauris, France, with his young son Claude.

For all of his postwar stories, Capa carried at least two cameras: one loaded with black-and-white film and one with color film. He used a combination of 35mm and 4x5 Kodachrome and medium-format Ektachrome film, emphasizing the importance of this new medium in his development as a photographer. He continued working with color until the end of his life, including in Indochina, where he was killed in May 1954. His color photographs from Indochina actually foreshadowed the color images that would dominate Vietnam War coverage in the 1960s.

'Capa in Color' represents the first museum exhibition to explore Capa's fourteen-year engagement with color photography and assess this work in relation to his overall career and the historical period in which he worked. While his talent with black-and-white composition was prodigious, adopting color film halfway through his career required new discipline and artistic vision. The exhibition explores how Capa began to see the world anew through color film and how his work adapted to a new postwar sensibility, requiring him to readjust not only to color compositions but also to a postwar audience interested in being entertained and transported to new places around the world.