Robert Capa was a quintessentially fearless photojournalist who will never be forgotten. He’s most famously known for his photographs from the Spanish Civil War; including his most famous image, The Falling Soldier/ Death of a Loyalist Soldier. Picture Post termed him “the greatest war photographer in the world” in 1938. When World War II began, he moved to America and worked freelance for LIFE, Time, and other publications. From 1941 to 1946, he was a war correspondent for LIFE, traveling with the US Army and documenting Allied victories in North Africa. In 1948-1950, he photographed the turmoil surrounding Israel’s declaration of independence and in 1954 he traveled to Hanoi to photograph the French war in Indochina for LIFE; shortly after his arrival, he stepped on a landmine and was killed.
Sebastião Salgado, a highly respected photojournalist, is best known for his intensely demanding, long-term projects that focus on themes of nature and humanity. In 1971, he took his first photographs while on an assignment in Rwanda as an economist for the International Coffee Organization. He then became a freelance photojournalist in 1973. Over the next decade, Salgado photographed a wide variety of subjects, including the famine in Niger and the civil war in Mozambique. In 1981, he gained prominence in the United States with a riveting photograph that captured John Hinckley’s attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. In 1993, his international reputation was confirmed when his exhibition “In Human Effort” was shown at the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art. This was a huge step for photojournalists as it was the first time in the history of Japan’s national museums that the works of an individual photographer were displayed.