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He wanted to become a journalist, he started to photograph in 1930. From July 1931 he studied journalism at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik (German Political College). He worked as a photographer assistant for Dephot photo agency. His first success was his picture of Trotsky. His first photographic report was published in Vu that was time when he changed his name to Capa. In 1936-37 the left-wing French magazine Regards commissioned him to photograph the Spanish Civil War, he became a classic with his photograph entitled the Death of the Miliciaman. His pictures appeared in Life as well. Stefan Lorant published several of his pictures in his magazines, Weekly Illustrated, Picture Post.

Lorant found out the slogan "Robert Capa the greatest war-time photographer in the world".

Capa moved to the United States and worked as a war correspondent and took photographs in Britain, North Africa, Sicily, Italy, on the D-day he disembarked with the first American troops. After the war he received American citizenship, this time officially by the name of Robert Capa. In 1947 he went to the Soviet Union with John Steinbeck. In the same year he established Magnum with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger and some others. He photographed of the emmigrant Hungarian battalion fighting for the liberation of Jerusalem.

In 1948 he spent six weeks in Hungary, photographed the more and more apparent signs of the communist influence.

In 1954 Life sent him to Indo-China to report on the French colonial fights. On 25th May he stepped on a mine and died.