Camera Straps and Robert Capa

[jonasv]

His most famous D-Day shots were so blurred because a lab technician screwed up the processing and partially melted the negatives...

 

[Jocko]

Some of his photos are so out of focus and so camera shakey that it adds to the drama and indicates his own vulnerability. Although I doubt that was intentional.

Capa was by no means alone. Fatality rates for British army photographers varied between theatres of war, but were never less than 25% and often nearer 50%. This was largely due to the standard issue camera - a zeiss folder, with an 85mm lens; you had to be in the action or you wouldn't get the shot.

Whilst in no sense denigrating Capa, I'm always a little wary of the hero-worship accorded a few "star" war photographers - or for that matter, the Magnum agency. We forget that the vast majority of those taking photographs were anonymous servicemen or pool reporters, whose pictures were often filed away and are barely known - if known at all. That doesn't mean they lack profound merit.

Ian

 

[VinceC]

I agree Capa had no monopoly on good photos during the war. But part of success includes getting your work to a wider audience.

Capa's life story is fascinating and complex. He and his girlfriend invented the persona of "Robert Capa, rich and famous American photographer" while young and struggling for work in Paris in the early 1930s. It was then up to Andrei Friedman to live up to the legendary swashbuckler they had created. His girlfriend was quickly killed on assignment, and he spent a good part of his life trying to live up to, then live down, the image they had created.

There were many good signal photographers during World War II, and some of their images were released to the public. Capa specifically sought the fame and glamour of being a war photographer in an era when still photographers were media stars. He worked hard to achieve it, then had it kill those he loved and, utlimately, himself.

 

[Jocko]

Vince, I completely agree. My problem lies with the popular image of the "war photographer"; a curious combination of Hemingwayesque machismo and liberal bleeding heart. It seems to me a dishonest persona: a pimp who supplies vicarious thrills - "the image of war without its guilt" - and allows us to righteously "tut-tut" and relish horror.

Yet to be honest, my main concern would be whether it is relevant to apply a late-18th century romantic conception of the "Artist" to reportage photography - or perhaps to photography pre se. I personally do not feel it is.

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

I agree. A mate of mine was a (print) reporter in the first Gulf War and it ruined his life and career.

 

[Pherdinand]

My own favorite oldtimer is Andre Kerstesz.

I think it was Kerstesz who got Brassai into photography originally. In Paris in the 1920's or so.

Oh yes. As i said about Capa in the other thread...
Kertesz and Brassai, another two hungarian photographers that got appreciated only when they have left their home country.
In fact Brassai took up this name later, after the city Brasso, which lies in the corner of Transylvania, today in the center of Romania, sixty years ago still part of Hungary.
Kertesz on the other hand, means gardner and it is a rather common hungarian family name.

Not only in photography...
Vasarelly is also of hungarian origins, was initially called Vasarhelyi which means from Vasarhely, a city -again- in Transylvania.
Or the nuclear scientists, Szilard Leo, or Teller Ede, working in the US, were both hungarians.
George Soros is also somewhat known...he's another hungarian who wasn't "good enough" in hungary.

Of course many of these are called hungarians but in fact were/are jews living in hungary, if that's a remarkable difference.