May be the guy who wrote the article is an art critique... and not a
specialist on 30' European history...
But it's true that it's so easy to use clichés... Capa was in the republican
side, Capa must have been a communist... furthermore the official communists
were fast at annexing artist, preferably dead artists ... a dead hero
doesn't argue...... like Garcia Lorca, for instance, who never was a
communist... or Gerda Taro(see further) who was buried with full communist
faste in Paris in 37 even if she was more than critical about the stalinians
behaviour in Spain... it's not that easy to insert some truth in the
process.
By the way, the famous picture is part of a serie (taken on 5th of September
1936 near Cordoba, the name of the fallen milician is now known : Federico
Borrell from Alcoi, near Alicante), and it's seems difficult to verify if
the actual photographer was Capa or Gerda Taro (Capa's colleague and
girlfriend) since they were both on site... also it's a very "unsharp"
picture compared with the rest of Capa's Spanish production, which of course
gives the strength of the picture; it was very modern at the time of
publication... a really unorthodox aesthetic, not the pompeous communist
aesthetic nor the anarchist one (pompeous with a smile)... but taking a
picture during fights with a leica III is a challenge in it's own right.
This picture is a rupture ... unsharp, dynamic... showing the instant of
death... not at all propaganda minded... it's the first modern war
picture... a contradiction at the time, until then pictures showed attacks
with living (lyric) ardent fighters (good side) and dead bodies from the
opposite side (bad side), or dead as leftovers and victims... here we have
the dynamism of the attack (the fight for freedom) and the dead together...
the statement is : even the good ones die... all other photographers would
have discarded such a picture...
(for references : La guerre civile espagnole, des photographies pour
l'histoire, Marval, Barcelona 2001)
Now let's hope that those newly found negatives will be shown ... the
photographic evidence on the Spanish Civil War and Revolution being so
scarce...
Stephan
-----Message d'origine-----
De : olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx] De la part
de Andrew Fildes
Envoyé : dimanche 27 janvier 2008 23:10
À : olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Objet : [OM] Re: Robert Capa negatives found (NY Times article)
Slightly wrong????
It's not stupid at all to make such a distinction - it's critical.
I suppose that if your the NYT, on socialist is pretty much like
another. Sigh.
More like duct taping a Zuiko to a Hassleblad.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 28/01/2008, at 5:24 AM, Stephan Van den Zegel wrote:
> The New-York Times is slightly wrong (as usual) when describing
> Capa and the
> others as communist minded...;
> snip
> I know it sounds a bit stupid to make such
> an historical distinction... but for those who know the difference
> it's like
> if a journalist was asserting that zuiko lenses where build to fit
> on a
> Canon or Nikon body ;-)
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