Robert Capa: Israel 1948-1950
Robert Capa documents the lives of the immigrants who travelled to the newly formed state of Israel
With the outbreak of hostilities in Israel in 1948, Robert Capa came to the country to witness and photograph the ceremony of the declaration of the State and the War of Independence. Over the following two years, Capa revisited Israel a number of times to document the waves of immigration, the transit camps, and the deep uncertainty facing the new-born Jewish nation.
Despite Capa’s fame as a photographer of wars, these pictures represent a part of his work which is marked by immediacy, warmth, and intimacy with his subject. The images presented here are closer and more familiar than much of than Capa’s earlier work, perhaps because he himself, having fled Hungary for Berlin and Paris, was a symbol of the wandering, driven and desperate Jewish Diaspora.