Floyd L. Davidson
Savageduck <savageduck1@{REMOVESPAM}me.com>wrote:

On 2013-12-06 17:46:41 +0000, floyd@apaflo.com (Floyd L. Davidson) said:

Savageduck
Savageduck <savageduck1@{REMOVESPAM}me.com>wrote:

Eric Stevens
Should Robert Capa, then not have been considered a "top photographer"?

Savageduck
He had an instinct for dram and how light affects the image.

PeterN
He had a talent for being where the action was and documenting that action in whatever light was available. He wasn't able to wait around for suitable light for an art shot. He wasn't particularly interested in producing art and that was what killed him in Viet Nam.

Savageduck
However, in fact Robert Capa had a talend for knowing what would sell, and how to create that if he wasn't close enough to the real action.

PeterN
Not much planning or pre-visualizing here, and he did none of his own developing and printing. He was a photographer, pure and simple. He provided his agency with rolls of exposed film. < http://barbarapicci.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/robert-capa-2.jpg?w=1200&h= >

Savageduck
That image is commonly known as "The Falling Soldier" and was taken in Spain, apparently on September 5, 1936 near the "Cordoba front" at Cerro Muriano in Andalusia. The problem is that the the landscape shown in the image is in fact located 30 miles away from the front, near Espejo, Cordoba and was well removed any actual battle. Which is to say your "not much planning or pre-visualization" here is exactly the opposite. It was a bit too much planning. The image was staged. (Keep in mind that Capa was 22 years old.)

Floyd L. Davidson
That image has been the target of Capa detractors for over 70 years. The bottom line is the negative has not been found. The man in the images, a series of 7 shots, Frederico Borrell Garcia, was shot and killed on the day the photograph was taken. The most likely of the scenarios spun was, Garcia was actually posing for Capa out in the open when he was shot, and Capa was as surprised by the event as Garcia, and was lucky not to have been shot himself. < http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/01/27/arts/20080127_KENN_SLIDESHOW_index-3.html>

cite does not confirm your narrative, even in the slightest!

The "lost negatives" discussed were found in the 1990's, and have not shed any light on "The Fallen Soldier" image. It was after those negatives were found that it was conclusively proven that the landscape shown in the image was at a location where no battles had taken place. (Computer analysis has suggested it the man was not shot at all, but had lost his footing, and futher reveals that the gun is a "practice" weapon for drilling and was not even able to fire a round.)

Incidentally, even the identity of the man in the photograph is questioned. Where you get the information that it was a "series of 7 shots" I don't know as that doesn't even agree with what Capa claimed. Regardless, the scenario you present as "most likely" has been proven impossible.

The other thing to consider was the level of propaganda produced by both sides during the Spanish Civil War. Fifth Column was a term developed by the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, giving Franco's followers an alibi for wholesale slaughter of civilians and discrediting of journalists like Orwell, Hemingway, & Martha Gellhorn, and photographers such as Capa.

Virtually nothing of the history around that image relates to war time propaganda.

Regardless of the authenticity of "The Falling Soldier", staged or not, Capa's WWII, China, and Indo-China/Viet Nam work stands alone in its authenticity and capturing the moment without staging or "pre-visualization".

< http://kirolosabdelsayed.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/robert_capa_-_235.jpg >

The man who renamed himself "Robert Capa" certainly did produce a vast quantity of photography that was everything he claimed it was.

But let's not forget that he also pre-visualized "Robert Capa", and created the character before it existed, of a photographer with a reputation. In fact it was something he (Endre Friedmann) and his partner Girda Taro produced for marketing purposes. Initially "Robert Capa" photographs were produced by both Friedmann and Taro (who was kill in Spain, at age 26), and indeed there is credible evidence that the photograph in question could have been one taken by Girda Taro.