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 photo- grapher. After his brother's death in 1954, he joined Magnum, and when David 'Chim' Seymour died in Suez in...