War Photography

 

"The Falling Man" taken by Robert Capa in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War

This image was taken by Robert Capa, supposedly of a Spanish soldier being shot down during battle, and the authenticity of this photo is one to dispute. Some people claim that the photo was faked, or staged, by Capa, while others argue the location and the name of the "Falling Man" is not Federico Borrell Garcia

The following information has been taken from La sombra del iceber, a 2007 documentary that claims this photo is fake. This documentary makes these claims that;

A 1937 Spanish anarchist publication claimed that Federico Borrell died behind a tree, not in the middle of a field/on a hill.

A specialist in forensic science claimed, after analyzing pictures of Borrell and pictures of the "Falling Man", that the militiaman depicted is not Federico Borrell García.

In 1975 a journalist named Gallaher said that Capa himself told Gallager that the picture was staged.

An astronomical study concludes that the picture was taken at 9:00 a.m., not at 17:00. No battle happened at 9:00."

When 1939, and the start of the World War II, rolled around, Capa was living in New York City, working for Life magazine. He was an "enemy alien" during the Second World War; an "enemy alien" is someone from a country that is at war with the current country they reside in.

During WWII, Capa snapped his most famous work at the D-Day landing, having swum ashore and managed to take and astounding one hundred and six pictures during just the first few hours of the battle. The film was been sent back to Life magazine, but a mistake was made in the darkroom, and a technician set the driers too high and melted the negatives of a total of three and a half of the four rolls of film that Capa had sent back, and of the one hundred and six shots taken, only eight remained unharmed.

 Above are three of the eight shots that remain.

Capa continued to take photos through to his death in 1954, during the First Indochina War, where he was killed by a landmine, with his camera in-hand.

Other men have been praised for their war photography, Tony Vaccaro is one of them. Born in Greenberg, Pennsylvania, December 1922, Vaccaro used a Graflex Speed Graphic camera, which was big, and bulky, to take pictures with. After growing up in Italy, and the start of the Second World War, Vaccaro moved back to the United States to escape the Fascist regime and Italian military service. He fought as an American soldier in 1944 and 1945 as a scout, leaving him more than enough free time to snap photos.

Eddie Adam's is a more-recent war photographer, he took the picture of Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a Vietcong prisoner (Nguyễn Văn Lém) in the street in February 1968. This was captured on camera in both print and film.

This image is another perfect decisive moment; the picture was taken in the same second that the trigger was pulled. You can see Loan's finger has squeezed in towards his fist, and the look of mixed pain and surprise on Lém's face as the bullet impacts into the side of his skull. The picture has been taken at a perfect angle, catching them both in the shot with what could be a yawning chasm between, again this could signify America (Loan) against Vietnam (Lém).

 

The connection with this topic and Henri Cartier-Bresson's photo of the man jumping over the puddle, is the way that the man signifies America and England, and the puddle signifies the war, or the "unknown" future that awaited them. (Below)