The Photo that Never Dies

One could safely say that the photo that made Robert Capa was his "Death of a Spanish Soldier," shot during the Civil War in Spain in 1936.  Yet in the years since it was made -- most particularly in the last 30 or so -- it has become increasingly mired in controversy.

I wrote about it a few years ago for the NPPA, when I thought the newest clue, far from proving the photo a fake, simply provided a difference without a distinction.  Now we have Capa himself telling the story of it, a similar story to another version he wrote before.  This is actually rather unusual, as he was notoriously reluctant to talk about it.  Why?

The usual theory was that the event had profoundly upset him.  Remember, when the picture was made, Capa was a young man just starting out.  While he affected an air of nonchalance (even then), Spain was his first serious war coverage, and like any real war, it wasn't pretty.  (Let's keep in mind, this is the fighting that brought us Guernica.)

"Guernica"

Also, he was in the throes of his first, perhaps most profound and some say greatest love.  He and Gerta Taro (nee Pohorylle -- like Capa, who was born Andre Friedmann, she chose a literal nom de guerre) were at the least linked when the picture was made (she was with him, also making photos).  Not long after, Gerda was killed in Spain, still covering the war, while Capa was in China covering the fighting there.  Some say the love had died (she was in the company of another man when killed), some not, but there is an air of tragedy about the affair and his accounts of it.  I like to think that he always looked on her as The One, lost to death and time, and thus another reason he didn't like to talk about the events then.

However, here's something else I think: In that 1947 interview, he's lying.

As I say in the NPPA piece, I don't think there was a machine gun, let alone four waves of attacks to take it.  I think a bunch of relatively inexperienced soldiers were running around in a field playing at battle for the cameras when everything turned horribly real.  I don't think Capa even meant to take that picture.  Rather, he flinched when the shot was fired and accidentally triggered the shutter.  I think the men then ran around trying to assemble some sort of response, getting at least one more of them killed, before a sniper melted back into the landscape.  And most of all, I think Capa was embarrassed by what he saw as personal cowardice, disgusted by his own profit from the situation, and finally trapped by the myth that rose up around the picture.

So he finally, through a few reluctant retellings, assembled a more acceptable story probably based on his later experiences in combat, something that could be disposed of quickly with a minimum of questions, thus sparing him the need to dwell on his unpleasant and ambivalent feelings on the event.  It's a more public version of what we all do when trying to explain later some embarrassing mistake or unhappy argument, for example.

But here's the thing: it's just my guess based on personal experience in life and photography and some research.

Light Reading

I do look a lot at other blogs, if for no other reason than to try to figure out how they manage to post so often.  A couple caught my attention today as they addressed things I have either blogged on or referenced vaguely before.

Photography Talk has an entry on the "Six Most Annoying Trends in Photography" that I pretty much agree with.  I must admit I blanched a bit when I got to Number 6: "Professional Know-It-Alls," but was relieved when I found I hardly fell into their definition, which involved those who live by rigid rules. 

Meanwhile, Japan Camera Hunter (an oddly named blog these days, as it has expanded into a rather interesting spot for thoughts on street and film -- as opposed to digital -- photography) has a piece titled "Why your phone is not your friend."  The hed caught my eye, and again I feared that it was something it is not. 

Lately, on my other blog -- or "phlog," as I like to call it, as it centers more on my pictures -- I have been forced to admit that, though Leica is in its name ("The Guy with the Leica") I've not been able to process the film I've been shooting in my Leicas.  It's a money thing that's been going on for some two years now, and frankly I choose not to blog about that merely because I think it would come across as whining.  That's neither here nor there.  My point is (and, as Ellen Degeneres would say, "I do have one") that I've had to substitute pictures I've shot with digital Nikons and, more often, my iPhone.

This was not shot with a Leica.

from The Gut with the Leica "phlog"

When I first broke down and posted the iPhone pics, I did it under the "camera you have" rule (as in: "The best camera is the one you have with you"), but I've got to say as I've returned to them, they're not that bad.  Maybe, I feared, I was missing something.  Nope.  Japan Camera Hunter is merely afraid that, with one's head down on the little smartphone screen, one is missing the real world passing by. 

Finally, here's another from the endlessly fascinating PetaPixel site, "Five Painless Steps for Getting Rid of the Fear of Street Photography Once and for All."  Again, I'm not sure that it's directly on the mark implied by the title (which is a real mouthful -- don't they have copy editors over there?)  It will only take a minute to read, but I can save you even that by saying it comes down to two things: Engage with people to stop being afraid of them; most people like having their picture made.  Still, worth the minute to get all the thoughts and encouragement in between.

Amongst those thoughts was an interesting take on the famous Robert Capa quote, "If your photos aren't good enough, you're not close enough."  The author, Oliver Duong, thinks Capa has been generally misunderstood by having his words taken far too literally.

"What Capa meant was to get closer to your work, to what you are doing," Duong writes.  "If your photographs aren’t good enough, you are not connected enough. How does that help in regards to fear and street photography? It tells you that you do not have to get physically close to your subject as the sole goal."  Frankly that sounds more like Cornel than Robert to me, but I've been very wrong about things like that before.  (Remind to tell you my embarrassing story about "Stonewall" Jackson someday.)

I think his point is valid -- I once read that Henri Cartier-Bresson complained about having to use his 35mm instead of 50mm lens too much when he shot in the US -- but I think Capa is misunderstood on a much more literal level.  Many new photographers are afraid to get right into the midst of the action, and so they produce pictures that reflect their distant, stand-offish attitude.  A better picture brings across the feel and swirl of events, and usually that requires the photographer to get right in on top of them.

Also, let's remember Capa was primarily known as a war photographer (though I'd bet war pictures only make up about a third or a quarter of his work).  An AP photographer once told me he covered war with a 20mm and a 300mm lens, as the action was either right next to you or really far away, and I noticed pictures of another photographer friend, Frank Johnston, when he covered Vietnam, inevitably showed him with only two camera bodies: a Leica with something wide angle (a 28?) and a Nikon F with the immortal 105.

Look at all those great war photographs.  I'll bet you can count the ones shot with a long lens on one hand.

Frank Johnston shooting for UPI in Danang in 1967.

From UPI

Also, when I called it up, there were some intriguing titles at the bottom, like "Joel Meyerowitz Says He Despises Bruce Gilden's Attitude, Calls Him a Bully."

Looking back...

Sixty-five years ago today, Paris was liberated by Allied forces, specifically a Free French armored division moved forward to ensure the city was freed by its own people.

Well, actually, less than technically, it was liberated by a couple of crazed journalists who had rushed ahead in their jeep to get a good hotel room. Life photographer Robert Capa had encountered the French tanks just outside Paris, and discovered one crewed not by French but Spaniards -- veterans of the Spanish Civil War in which Capa had established his reputation. It had the name Teruel painted on it, and he climbed aboard, explaining he had been at that very battle in 1937. So on Teruel he rode into Paris.

However, on his arrival, Capa made a shocking discovery. "I wanted to spend my first night in the best of best hotels," he wrote in Slightly Out of Focus. "The Ritz. But the hotel was already occupied. Hemingway's army had come into Paris by a different road, and after a short and happy fight had taken their main objective and liberated the Ritz from the German yokels." Luckily for Capa, who had been feuding with Hemingway, they made up that night in the bar, and the famous writer made room in his hotel.