My hero

Rico wanted, when he was young and still foolish, to be a war correspondent, specifically a photojournalist. (Growing up in a house built by Carl Mydans, famed Time/Life photojournalist, whom he met several times, might have had something to do with that.) One of his heroes was Robert Capa, who took some of the most powerful war photos ever, particularly his work in the Spanish Civil War:


Seems some 4000 of his negatives turned up, along with photos by Gerda Taro and David Seymour in the late 1990s.
Carrying with him the mantra "if your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Capa embedded himself in the trenches of war, capturing the struggle and tragedy of the everyday soldier. In the process, he redefined the standard for war pictures. The Spanish Civil War was the first conflict for photojournalist Capa -- born Endre Friedmann in Hungary in 1913 -- but he also covered the second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the first Indochina War.

Rico says he's still sorry he couldn't emulate Capa, at least up to the point where he stepped on a land mine in Vietnam...