Robert Capa - Politics

Politics

As a teenager, Capa was drawn to the Munkakör (Work Circle), a group of socialist and avant-garde artists, photographers, and intellectuals centered around Budapest and he was a regular participant in the demonstrations against the repressive regime of Miklós Horthy. In 1931, just before his first photo would be published, Capa was arrested by the Hungarian secret police, beaten, and jailed for his radical political activity; a police official’s wife—who happened to know his family—won Capa’s release on the condition that he would leave Hungary immediately.

The Boston Review described Capa as "a leftist, and a democrat—he was passionately pro-Loyalist and passionately anti-fascist ..." During the Spanish Civil War Capa travelled with and photographed the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), under which George Orwell served, which resulted in his best-known photograph.

The British magazine Picture Post ran his photos from Spain accompanied by a portrait of Capa, in profile, with the simple description: "He is a passionate democrat, and he lives to take photographs."