October 22 marked the 100th birthday of Robert Capa, the daring photojournalist whose courage and charisma raised him to an almost mythical status. In his lifetime the Hungarian photographer covered five world wars, befriended Pablo Picasso and founded Magnum Photos with fellow pioneers Henri Cartier-Bresson, David “Chim” Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert.
© Robert Capa/Magnum Photos/ICP
Capa passed away at only 40 years old, after being struck by a landmine on assignment in the First Indochina War. Yet his legend lives on through his photographs, the tales surrounding them, and his pithy nuggets of wisdom. Perhaps most iconic of all was his sage advice: "If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough." This simple phrase has spearheaded a movement to celebrate Capa's work in honor of his big B-day, with a little help from social media.
Each day leading up to the exhibition Capa In Color, which opens January 31, Magnum will match one of Capa's photographs with that of another renowned photographer who in some way responds to Capa's original. The project then opens up to the public, who is invited to upload their own variation on Capa's theme, tagging it #GetCloser100. The crowdsourced photos will be gathered and included in Capa's upcoming exhibition. "Think of it like a game of visual telephone,” Gideon Jacobs, Creative Director at Magnum Photos told TIME.
"It's really a fluid experiment of a project, both in concept and execution," Jacobs explained in an email to The Huffington Post. "But the goals, I think, are concrete: to celebrate Robert Capa's 100th birthday and his career as a seed-sower of the photographic tradition, and to demonstrate how social media can be used as a tool that highlights the seminality of great photography."
See some of Capa's photographs below, and, if inspiration strikes, respond with a photograph of your own.
© Robert Capa/Magnum Photos/ICP
© Robert Capa/Magnum Photos/ICP
© Robert Capa/Magnum Photos/ICP
© Robert Capa/Magnum Photos/ICP