The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence by Susie Linfield

Author:Susie Linfield
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2010-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

People

FIGURE 7.1

The Aragon front, Spain, 1936: Robert Capa took this picture in the early days of the Spanish civil war; these men are members of the Marxist militia POUM. Capa was an ardent antifascist, but he considered war to be a grievous necessity rather than a glorious quest. After Franco’s victory, he never returned to Spain. Photo: Robert Capa; © Cornell Capa/Magnum Photos.

7

ROBERT CAPA

The Optimist

In a war you must hate somebody or love somebody, you must have a position or you cannot stand what goes on.

ROBERT CAPA

Sometimes, when I am feeling sad, I look at a photograph of Robert Capa’s that I especially like. You could call it a war photograph, though it shows two men dancing instead of two men fighting. They wear overalls and white shirts; they are almost certainly peasants or workers, and poor. The one who faces us has a black beret and a moustache and a smile, and he flings his arms wide as he dances. In a semicircle behind the dancing couple stand seven other men, their faces lit with pleasure as they watch. The photograph radiates an ebullient generosity, and it does what every good news photograph should do: draws us in and, simultaneously, makes us want to go outside the frame to learn more about these men and their lives and the cause for which they fought.

Capa shot this picture on the Aragon front in August 1936, during the early, optimistic days of the Spanish civil war; the men it depicts were members of the Marxist but anti-Stalinist POUM, with which George Orwell would fight. Capa covered the war as an exciting news event, and it was. But he covered it too because—as a Jew, a refugee, a leftist, and a democrat—he was passionately pro-Loyalist and passionately antifascist, and because he believed that the outcome of the war was of crucial importance far beyond the borders of poor, marginal, backward Spain. He turned out to be right.

Robert Capa was the world’s quintessential war photographer from the 1930s until the mid-1950s, which is often referred to as the heyday—that is, the pretelevision day—of photojournalism. His political commitment, his easy camaraderie, and his courage made Capa not just a famous photographer but a deeply admired one. In 1938 the British magazine Picture Post ran a handsome portrait of Capa, taken by his lover Gerda Taro in Spain. He is shown in profile looking through a movie-camera viewfinder, with a caption that reads: “He is a passionate democrat, and he lives to take photographs.” The many publications that ran Capa’s pictures—whether mainstream American magazines like Life, liberal British ones like Picture Post, or the Communist-affiliated Regards and Ce Soir in France—had a proudly possessive relationship to him. They referred to Capa as “our special envoy,” heralded his triumphs on their covers, and devoted page upon page to his avowedly partisan pictures. Unlike today’s photojournalists, Capa was not derided as a voyeur, a leech, or a pornographer. When he died in 1954—he was only forty—while on assignment in Vietnam, tributes poured in from around the world.

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