Accomplished Magnum photographer Cornell Capa passed away early on the morning of May 23rd at home in New York.
Cornell Capa was born Cornell Friedmann to a Jewish family in Budapest. In 1936 he moved to Paris, where his brother Andre (Robert Capa) was working as a photojournalist. He worked as his brother's printer until 1937, then moved to New York to join the new Pix photo agency. In 1938 he began working in the Life darkroom. Soon his first photo-story - on the New York World's Fair - was published in Picture Post.
In 1946, after serving in the US Air Force, Cornell became a Life staff photographer. After his brother's death in 1954, he joined Magnum, and when David 'Chim' Seymour died in Suez in 1956 Capa took over as president of Magnum, a post he held until 1960.
Capa made an empathetic, pioneering study of mentally retarded children in 1954, and covered other social issues, such as old age in America. He also explored his own religious tradition. While working for Life, Capa made the first of several Latin American trips. These continued through the 1970s and culminated in three books, among them Farewell to Eden (1964), a study of the destruction of indigenous Amazon cultures.
Capa covered the electoral campaigns of John and Robert Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson and Nelson Rockefeller, among others. His 1969 book, New Breed on Wall Street, was a landmark study of a generation of ruthless young entrepreneurs keen on making money and spending it fast.
In 1974 Capa founded New York City's influential International Center of Photography, to which for many years he dedicated much of his considerable energy as its director.
There was a time when Cambodia was not even listed on Transparency International's Corruption Perception index.
But Cambodia is more and more part of the world... In 2007 it was listed nr 162 out of 179 (the last position being shared by Somalia and Myanmar). In 2006 it was in 151st place with 163 countries listed (Haiti was last). In 2005 Cambodia was 130th out of 158 countries. In 2004 it wasn't listed (which doesn't mean there was no corruption). So I guess one can say that the situation is not really brilliant on the corruption front in Faraway Kingdom.
One of the first things a cambodian child learns at school is corruption: every day the kids have to give 500 or 1000 Riel (0,25$) to their teacher to attend class (in a school system where education officially is for free), and supplementary private lessons are mandatory to pass examinations at the end of the year. But a teacher's salary is between 40 and 60 dollars a month. This could explain that. Should it?
If there is corruption at the lowest level there must be higher up? Sure, but the higher you go the more difficult and risky it gets to prove. And if as a journalist you find something juicy, does the amount of press freedom available allow you to expose the scheme? Well not necessarily, and that's the trouble with countries where corruption is institutionalised: usually press freedom can be bought as well. If silence can't be bought with some, thugs can be bought to put physical pressure on the journalist. If the journalist escapes the thugs (although 9 journalists died since 1993) there are ways to bring him to court. Etc.. That beast eats you from within... It's all over the place: journalists get a free meal and an envelope with "compensation money" at press conferences or have to pay money to get an interview. Or journalists blackmail people they have sensitive information about.
Larry Towell is a photojournalist who travels reluctantly and only when the subject really matters. But if he travels he does so to really follow his subjects around for a long time, he tells a story from a very humanistic point of view adding his own unique perspective. From 1993 to 2006 he photographed in Israel and Palestine, producing an immense body of work. Two amazing books, "Then Palestine" and "No Man's Land", arose out of this work.
Initially he wished to document the birth of a nation, following the Oslo-Agreement. Instead he ended up documenting what he would later refer to as "the World's largest open-air prison". In 2001 he was given a small video camera and began to maintain a video diary while working in Israel and Palestine. In his 40 minute documentary "Indecisive Moments" - which won the "Achievement in Filmmaking for a Documentary" award at the 2007 New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, also known as "the voice of indie film" - Larry Towell documents events and perspectives of those caught up in violence. The result is a highly personal documentary from the perspective of one of the world’s most acclaimed photojournalists. "Indecisive Moments" bridges the gap between artist and reporter bringing the viewer inside Towell's highly stylized world.
Ordering Discount
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If you want to order and would like to take advantage of the discount please send me an e-mail. If you are one of the first ten you'll get a coupon code from us that you need to use in order to receive the discount. If you do not use this code we can not give a discount anymore once the ordering process is completed.
There was a time when Cambodia was not even listed on Transparency International's 
