Yet again...

[2F/2F]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090717/wl_afp/spainhistoryphotographycapa_20090717153125

 

[Jeff Kubach]

That bugs the hell out of me! Gives photographers a bad name.

Jeff

 

[david b]

Is that a link to a porn site?

 

[2F/2F]

By "Yet again", I mean that this story has been reported and debated for years already...

 

[Domenico Foschi]

Yes, that's am old time rumor.
I wonder what they mean when they say the picture is "too perfect". A picture is what it is.
I also wonder if anybody has seen the roll where the picture comes from and if that is the only frame of the man or there are others of him dead.

 

[Anscojohn]

Yes, that's am old time rumor.
I wonder what they mean when they say the picture is "too perfect". A picture is what it is.
I also wonder if anybody has seen the roll where the picture comes from and if that is the only frame of the man or there are others of him dead.

******
I recall seeing proof sheet from the negs shot. IIRC, on Super XX (don't pin me down on that.) Capa was in a fairly deep trench, as shown by the full frame images. There were replacements coming forward and Capa got the fellow to go back some steps and come forward again several times. Apparently Capa was trying for the best possible image. My understanding is that the activity along the trench line in this quiet sector prompted a Disloyalist machine gunner to open fire, and that the militiaman was hit and killed. I also understand the the family of the militiaman acknowledged it; and that the casualty report for the sector on the day listed his death by enemy action. To the best of my recollection, Capa did not leave the trench. The classic image is heavily cropped from the neg as shot.

 

[Q.G.]

The strongest clue that it is not what it is suposed to be is a second image of another person being shot in the very same spot.
The two images have been superimposed, and not even the clouds in the sky have moved in between the two events.

Under machine fire, they left the "trench", recovered the body, all in good time for another soldier to be shot. Not near the spot, but in exactly the same spot.
Hmm... Such a speedy recovery, under fire. And what a coincidence!

There are other clues.

But we will never know for sure, either way.

Oh and no, the negatives haven't survived. There only are prints.

 

[Anscojohn]

The strongest clue that it is not what it is suposed to be is a second image
Oh and no, the negatives haven't survived. There only are prints.

*******
Do you mean copies of the proof sheet?

 

[Q.G.]

No. Prints.

 

[Anscojohn]

I was under the impression I had seen the proof sheet in a recurring end page section of one of the photography magazines I have read over the years. I may have mistaken one of those articles with something from the link below. Or not. Perhaps it was in Aperture when an earlier version of this piece was published. I should know not to depend upon memory.



http://www.photographers.it/articoli/cd_capa/img/falling soldier.pdf

 

[Sirius Glass]

That bugs the hell out of me! Gives photographers a bad name.

Jeff

What about jounalists? If your newspaper is starved for real news [read: not something about MJ], then drag up something old and call it new! Beats using one's brain to come up with new material!

Steve

 

[Q.G.]

The film had been cut up in short bits, and single frames. The remaining negatives have been put in sequence (guesstimate work), and contacted. Not in 1936, but much later, by the way.
But the film was not complete, and the negatives of both fallen soldiers are missing.

The story is quite complex. The person has seen identified (probably), but 60 years later. Proof of his identity has been accompanied by mention that only 1 person was recorded to have been shot. What about the second fallen fighter? And, if i recall the story correctly, no such records exist anyway. There are eyewitness accounts, or rather accounts of people who say they heard about the events of the day from Capa himself. At least one of them is proven to be a fabrication. The other pictures that were published, and/or of which negatives still exist too do not provide a clear picture of the events of that day. It is also said, and quite plausible, that Capa and the fighters were playing around, at least before the event, possibly after the event too. Another thing is that Capa has been known (without any trace of doubt) to stage pictures.

But none of these things proofs anything, either way.
These pictures can indeed be 'the genuine article'. There is at least one answer to any of the many doubts about the 'veracity' of the pictures. But not a single one definitive.
Or they could be staged, and thus fakes. No definitive proof for that either.
We'll probably never know.

 

[Jeff Kubach]

What about jounalists? If your newspaper is starved for real news [read: not something about MJ], then drag up something old and call it new! Beats using one's brain to come up with new material!

Steve

True!

Jeff

 

[Q.G.]

Don't be too harsh: remember that new generations grow up continuously, for whom this really is the first time they hear this, and other often repeated stories.

And usually there is a reason why such stories return when they do. There probably is a new book about Capa about to hit the shops, or a larger exhibition of his work about to open somewhere. Something that has to be advertised and sold.
And sure enough: "El Periodico said it based its study on an exhibition -- launched in New York in 2007 and now in Barcelona -- of 150 photographs taken by Capa in conflicts around the world during the 1930s and 1940s."

It's not journalism. It's marketing.
With free news on the internet (this one comes from Yahoo, right?), newspapers have to think of new ways to earn a crust.

 

[Roger Krueger]

It seems obvious he was at least planning to take a picture of the guy before he was shot. No way you could get someone that soon after being shot otherwise. Even re-aiming a pre-focused camera would take too long.

The point that convinced me was the guy who pointed out that the soldier's hand is in a position very unlikely for someone staging a fall, but perfectly consistent with someone who's just been shot. So I'm in the "staging a shot when surprised by a sniper" camp.

Really sloppy journalism to give such incomplete coverage to an issue that's been analyzed so thoroughly.

 

[BradS]

ok...even if the photo was staged...so what? The message is the same.


In war, people die...

 

[2F/2F]

ok...even if the photo was staged...so what? The message is the same.


In war, people die...

You are viewing it as a fine art photo, not as news journalism via photography.

Proper news journalism should not have any "message". It is designed do one thing: to tell people what happened. That is the issue. It is news journalism first. Photography is simply the method used to present - or supplement in most cases - the news.

If it was staged, then it is a neat photo illustration of "In war, people die", but it is not news journalism. Does this mean it can't be published? Of course not. It just means that it should not be published with the caption/title that we know, and presented as news journalism (or "history", at this point).

What really matters would not be that he staged the photo. It would be that he staged it, and then went on to use it as news journalism. Whether he or an editor did this, I personally do not know, and I am unsure if anyone knows who originally captioned the photo. We would have to see the way in which it was originally published and know who originally provided the caption in order to properly place any blame.

 

[BradS]

You are viewing it as a fine art photo, not as news journalism via photography.

Ah...yes. You are exactly correct (and very...perceptive?).

Still, I wonder how it compares to what passes for "journalism" today? I'm thinking of the main stream media here....and, especially the entertainment pseudo news (a al Fox, CNN, et al)

 

[2F/2F]

You are not wrong...it is just that your statement only applies in certain uses of the photo. At this point, the picture very well could be a fine art photo, or a journalistic photo illustration, in certain uses. The debate only really revolves around its use as a news/historical photo. IMO, such use of this photo should no longer be considered proper, and we should also further examine the rest of Capa's pix so as to purge the historical record of any misinformation. It is a good pic, and still has many purposes, but use as a historical document of actual events should not be one of them, IMO. Maybe a minor nit to pick, but it's really a matter of principal more than anything.

We should also remember that journalistic standards were very different back then; very, very different. It explains why it might have "flown" at the time, but, using the same analogy, its "wings are clipped" by today's standards. It is a great example of why original evidence, not simply previously published information, must be constantly dug up and drawn upon in order to improve our understanding of history. What I mean is that all the publications that have published the picture since it was first published have captioned/titled it based on the originally-published caption. Now that there is evidence that makes an IMO overwhelming case that the photo was captioned incorrectly in its original use, it makes all subsequent captionings incorrect as well, simply by fault of repeating incorrect information.

 

[Domenico Foschi]

Since the image might have been staged with the intent to mislead the viewer I feel that even under an artistic point of view the image cannot merit the term of "artistic photograph". The power of the image is in the fact that it had been taken at the precise moment the soldier had been hit. If it is true that it had been staged then I cannot find any other redeeming quality to have a proper place as a fine art photograph.

 

[2F/2F]

Since the image might have been staged with the intent to mislead the viewer I feel that even under an artistic point of view the image cannot merit the term of "artistic photograph". The power of the image is in the fact that it had been taken at the precise moment the soldier had been hit. If it is true that it had been staged then I cannot find any other redeeming quality to have a proper place as a fine art photograph.

Fine art need not have any redeeming quality. It can be a total lie in every way.

 

[Domenico Foschi]

It is the intent of the image that counts.

 

[Philippe-Georges]

What I wonder about is that surely Franco's men (thus the 'other' side) have done the same thing, but nobody happens to talk about nor recall it. And I think that by doing so, fascist dictator Franco was using images for propaganda purpose and by this misleading people, what is undoubtedly 'wrong' (I am certainly not defending fascism!).
So, how have we to look at this 'Capa case'. Is it Capa's answer to what was done, during that dirty civil war, by the fascist militia. Capa's image could be just an act of sympathy to the Republican Peoples Movement witch was the opposite to what the fascists were standing for. We will never know what really moved Capa to do this. That is why, to my personal opinion, we can hardly judge this act and should try to understand it in the light of the historical context.
Besides, who can swear he's undoubtedly objective all the time, who is so hard that he can stay uninvolved, particularly after what happened in Guernica?

Philippe

 

[2F/2F]

It is the intent of the image that counts.

It is the intent that "counts" in what way? Please define "counts" as you meant it. Do you mean that "counts" toward defining something as art?

Intent does not determine status as "art". The actual use does. In other words, art is not simply something that is made by an artist. It is something that is used as art. The focus is the art itself, not the artist. Something does not fail to be usable as art (or artistic) just because it is a lie, or it was made immorally with the intent to deceive, or it is low class and/or bad taste, or somebody does not like it, or it hurts somebody. (In fact, I would argue that the best and most socially important art does one or all of these things, usually as satire.)

Even though the journalism of it has now been shown to be a lie, the picture could be "an art".

I am not saying that now that we know it was staged, we should write some statement of intent, throw it up on a gallery wall, and drink wine while hovering around it. That does not define art. I am simply saying that it has purposes - in fact, now its only purposes are - beyond the raw informational, not least of which are aesthetic beauty and social commentary. (It has already been used for many purposes other than the imparting of information about the Spanish Civil War or war in general, by the way.)

I don't at all see the thought process that led to your conclusion that this can't be an artistic photo separate from its status as valid news journalism/history. As journalism, it's a lie, it was intended to deceive (if not by the photographer, than by *someone*), therefore......it could not possibly be used as art? I don't get the correlation.

The way I see it, if we don't like that it was intended to deceive, then we say so...end of story. Where does the need to bar it from the label of art come from?

 

[Roger Krueger]

But how do we view it if (as I believe) it was intended to be staged, but ended up unintentionally real? The journalist has certainly influenced the situation--perhaps to the point of partial culpability for the death--but if the death is real, does that matter?