Great article in The New Republic reviewing a new book on war photographer
Robert Capa.
Among the highlights:
"Beyond any dispute, he was brave, reckless, and led by an instinct for those split seconds when the dawn was enough to get an exposure and the explosions were spaced so that a photographer might just survive. He was also a man whose charm burned like a cigarette; a steady womanizer, beloved by men of action, soldiers, writers, hotel porters, and riffraff, too.
...
As soon as he had acquired skill with the Leica, the world provided him with a brimming subject: the Spanish Civil War. Then, as if wanting to be a Hemingway novel, the war also threw up his perfect love, chum, and colleague in Gerda Pohorylles, a German, a Red, a sexpot, and a camera person. For a season in Spain, they worked together, drank champagne, made love, and nearly caught bullets in their teeth.
...
Though Capa was not unduly mercenary, still he needed money for champagne, the women's silk underwear that came back after the war, and life in hotels. He was also weary of the restrictions imposed by Life and the other magazines for which he worked. So he hit on the idea of an agency for his own favorite camera people, a kind of United Artists of still pictures. Thus Magnum came into being in 1947--the name was inspired by the champagne, of course--with a group that included Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David Seymour."
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The most interesting part of the article by David Thomson, for me, is the implication that Capa's most famous photo, "The Falling Soldier" in Spain in 1936 - is a set up which Thomson compares to the Jessica Lynch "rescue" footage as possibly little more than propaganda.
Would a prominant photojournalist stage a scenario to express a point of view or heighten dramatic impact? As a photojournalist myself, I'm SHOCKED! SHOCKED! that such a question could be asked.
Posted by: Adrian / 6:25 PM
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