Capa

international | arts and media | opinion/analysis Monday June 12, 2006 20:31 by Liam Mullen - Freelance Journalist

War Photography

“If your pictures aren’t good enough…you’re not close enough.”1a
Death of a Loyalist Soldier, was an image captured by Robert Capa in 1936, and reveals the exact moment a Republican militiaman is killed by a bullet during the Spanish civil War. The picture shows just how close Capa got to his subjects. Capa went on to co-find the Magnum Photograph Agency.1

War photography has always attracted daring photographers, and some images resonate, and depict the actual and ugly nature of conflict. Nick Ut’s photograph of the captured North Vietnamese fighter about to be executed11 – which when caught on television horrified millions – and the picture of the naked children fleeing the napalm attack – equally horrifying, helped convince Americans they were fighting a lost cause.
Photographers have striven to capture that one image since the days of Roger Fenton, considered the father of war photojournalism, and who captured images of the Crimean War in 1854. During this war and the American Civil War (1861-65) there were few actual battle scenes, mainly because camera equipment was bulky and cumbersome. The wet-plate process was still available which required subjects to pose for several minutes before the shot could be taken. Many pictures were staged. But staging is something that needs careful orchestrating, as recently the Los Angeles fired a photographer for manipulating images with Photoshop.
Margaret Bourke-White and George Rodgers captured concentration camp victims that displayed the evils of the Nazi regime, whilst Yosuke Yamahata showed to the world the horrors of the atom bomb attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.1
“Capa is a dashing, complex figure. He was a gambler who went to any lengths to get a photograph, an expert noted for the humanity of his work, a man of purpose who fought fascism.”111
“The stench is thick;
it’s hard to breathe.
I come up, I leave
returning to the clouded
afternoon. I feel encircled
by Madrid, now an island,
alone beneath the asphalt sky,
where ravens soar across,
in search of children and the old.
Black afternoon; rain, rain,
streetcars and militiamen.”iv

Capa Cornell (1991) – a photojournalist himself - has written a book about his brother entitled Children of War Children of Peace, which contains many of Robert’s pictures of children. A quote attributable to him states: “…he never fell into the most dangerous trap that besets those who photograph children: his pictures are never cute – they always have an edge.” Especially poignant is the child following the soldiers in the cemetery Nam Dinh May 21, 1954; Amsterdam 1945: A starving Dutch orphan; Bilbao 1937: Two frightened children and Barcelona 1939 Waiting for transport out of the city as Franco’s troops approach (young girl). The writer John Steinbeck praised him for his ability to “show the horror of a whole people in the face of a child”.v
In December 1938 the British magazine Picture Post proclaimed Capa “The Greatest War Photographer in the world.”vi He had been born Andre Friedmann in 1913 in Budapest and his parents owned a stylish dressmaking salon. A member of the Jewish faith he was exiled from Hungary in 1931 at the age of 17, for partaking in demonstrations. He fled to Berlin to study journalism at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik, but during the economic depression of the 1930’s, his parents’ fortunes turned, and he was forced to leave school.
He took a job with the Dephot Photographic Agency as a darkroom assistant, and from there he branched out into photography. Early influences on his work included Jacob Riis and Lewis W. Hine. His most famous photograph Death of a Loyalist Soldier has been compared to Picasso’s Guernica.vi During 1938 Capa spent six months in China photographing resistance to the Japanese invasion. But it his pictures of the Spanish Civil War that he is perhaps most famous for.vii
His pictures of this conflict reveal the inner workings of his mind, and of how he supported the Republican side in both his work and his heart. He has taken many pictures of women, and most of the men in his shots are soldiers. In his personal life he loved Gerda Taro, a German refugee he met in 1934. A year later he went to Spain on photographic assignments, taking Gerda with him occasionally, and it was during this time frame that he covered “the election of the leftist coalition Popular Front government”, in Paris.
“It is so much, so much
tomb, so much martyrdom, so much
galloping of beasts on the star!
Nothing, not the victory
will erase the terrible bloody hole:
nothing, not the sea, not the passage
of sand and time, not the geranium ablaze
on the grave.”

PABLO NERUDA
From “Offended Lands”iv

Gerda became a photojournalist herself. In 1937, whilst covering the retreat in Brunete, outside Madrid, a government tank killed Gerda. Capa heard the news in Paris, and never fully recovered from her death. He began taking more risks in his work.
“Under a manly sky, men among men,
Strong and glad as you are strong and glad,
Leave in forgetfulness”
LORENZO VARELA, “A POEM”iv
By the end of the Civil War in Spain he was working various projects in France, including an exhaustive account of the Tour de France. He also took shots of campaigns in Africa and Sicily. He was the only photographer in the first wave of troops to hit the Normandy beaches; he was involved in The Battle of the Bulge; and he parachuted in with the 17th Airborne to the Rhine Valley – with his lightweight Leica camera.viii
He is well known for his work in Life magazine. Capa founded The Magnum Photographic Agency with his good friends, the photographers Cartier-Bresson (a French photographer) and David Seymour (known also as Chim) and George Rodger. Cartier-Bresson was a student of the Surrealists, a popular art movement in Paris during the 1920’s.viiia viiib
When World War 11 broke out he sailed for New York, and began working for life, covering the Mexican presidential elections in 1940. In 1941, he re-crossed the Atlantic and began working on various war stories. At the end of the war he began dating Ingrid Bergman, a relationship that lasted for two years, and which culminated in him obtaining American citizenship. He tried the movie making business in Hollywood, but eventually moved on; having decided the movie business was not for him.
With the successful launch of Magnum in 1947, he visited various countries, including the fighting raging for Israel’s independence. Over the next few years he concentrated on the management of Magnum business, and was involved in training young photographers. In 1954, he made a fateful decision to accompany a detachment of French soldiers on a specialised mission, during the French Indochina War. He was killed after stepping on a landmine. His death was the first of a US journalist operating in Vietnam.
In 1955, “Life and the Overseas Press Club established the annual Robert Capa Award “for superlative photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad.” His brother established the International Center for Photography in New York City.
The Magnum Photographic Agency is well known in photography circles. After the attacks of September 11th 2001, they produced a book highlighting the terrors of that fateful day. A lot of their photographers were gathered coincidentally for a meeting in New York, and when the terrorists struck, they went out into the city armed with their cameras. Many captured images that struck a chord. Alex Webb summed up the day: “At times downtown appeared to be dusted with snow. Other times it brought to mind nightmares of nuclear winter.” Eli Reed of Magnum struck a lighter note: “I’m interested in seeing the goodness, the inner spirit of people, and how it survives.”viiii
One photograph, not in the book, but which was published widely is that of the fire-fighters sticking an American flag into the rubble and which is eerily reminiscent of US marines doing the same thing at Iwo Jima. Another terrible image of the day was the falling man, described by a tabloid as resembling a ballet dancer, whom nobody wanted to claim. Grieving relatives didn’t want the man to be their son, husband, and nephew, whatever.
An American photographer, James Nachtwey, has been the recipient of the Robert Capa Gold medal five times and has won the Leica award twice. He exemplifies what the Overseas Press Club and Life set out to achieve: photography that is hard-edged and depicts superlative courage and ingenuity.
An admirer of Eugene Smith – another Magnum photographer – and the artwork of Goya, the Spanish artist, Nachtwey has proven he is a worthy recipient of these awards. His work reflects the type of photography Capa was so adept at obtaining, with images from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the Lebanon. Sometimes the photographer acts as a voice to the world – proving the old axiom ‘A photograph tells a thousand words’ – as Nachtwey so poignantly displayed in his close-ups of a family grieving for lost loved ones in Kosovo. A war documentary featuring the work of Nachtwey is currently being made, and delves into war zones like Kosovo and the Palestinian territories, whilst highlighting the dangers inherent in this type of work.x
War photographers are always dying in action, always trying to capture that one elusive shot, the work has to be in the blood. Courage is usually needed to go into such situations. War photographers who hang up their cameras normally do so for family reasons, and many are often a lot older and wiser, than the young troops being sent to do battle. Journalism, which seeks to expose, top quality investigative reporting, will always harbour deadly dangers from brutal dictatorships to crime barons on the streets of Dublin. This was very evident in the death of Sunday Independent reporter Veronica Guerin murdered by Dublin crime gangs, and Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal, killed by Islamic extremists.
An unknown quote says of Capa: “For Robert Capa, taking pictures was his way of fighting fascism.” Can there be a better tribute or epitaph to the man?

1a Cox, Ted, 2003. American Masters salutes war photographer ROBERT CAPA, 27th May 2003, Chicago Daily Herald, Suburban Living; TV&Radio pg4
1 Weideman, Paul, 2003. PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE TRENCHES; THE CAMERA DOESN’T LIE, Santa Fe New Mexican, 26th September 2003, pg32.
11 Langford, Michael, 2000. Basic Photography, Seventh Edition, Oxford, England : Focal Press.
1 Ibid
111 Boedeker, Hal, 2003. ‘A life of conflict. Robert Capa got his fame photographing battles, yet hoped for peace.’ Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdalle, Fl). 28th May 2003. Lifestyle section. Pg3E.
iv Musco Nacional Centro de Arte Reine Sofia, 1999. ‘Heart of Spain Robert capa’s photographs of the Spanish Civil War, New York: Aperture Foundation Pg100
v Capa, Cornell; Whelan, Richard, 1991. Children of War Children of Peace, First Edition, Canada: Bullfinch Press
vi Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reine Sofia, 1999. Robert Capa’s photographs of the Spanish Civil War, New York: Aperture foundation
vi Ibid
vii Capa, Cornell, Whelan, Richard, 2001. ‘Robert Capa: The definite Collection.’ London and New York, Phaidon, Pgs 4-14
iv Ibid Pg99
iv Ibid
viii Loos, Ted, 2003. A Portrait of a man who knew war’s face, 25th May 2003, The New York Times, Late edition – Final, Section 13; pg4; column 1; Television
viiia Robinson, Andrew, 2003. Blurred Image, Sharp Vision, 16th May 2003 The Times Educational Supplement, Books Section, pg.25
viiib Schofield, Hugh, 2003. Photographer Cartier-Bresson, 94, celebrated in Paris show, 29th April 2003, Agence France Presse, International News Section
viiii Halberstam, David, 2001. New York September 11 by Magnum Photographers, New York, Powerhouse Books
x Hagiwara, Shogo, 2003. Images from the front lines, 11th September 2003, The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo) pg.13