That's an eloquent defense, Bob, and frankly I hope you're right. He did produce such undeniable work that something like this seems a bit amazing. But it's the self-mythologizing that I wonder about. After all, if it's just a question of dates well then as you say, it may be much ado about nothing. It's all very fascinating.
Brendan ----- Original Message ---- > From: Bob W <[email protected]> > To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List <[email protected]> > Sent: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 12:34:13 AM > Subject: RE: OT: Did Capa Fake the "Falling Soldier" Photograph? > > > > > I don't think it's OT in the least. > > > > I find it a bit shocking. Other greats have faked their work > > and still I doubt that it can be argued that Capa wasn't a > > great photographer. I read that he chose the name Capa to > > mimic Capra, as in Frank Capra, the iconic American Director. > > I suppose that sort of personality is not adverse to fudging > > at times. Still, this is pretty remarkable. > > > > -Brendan > > > > > > New claims that the iconic war image was staged: > > > > > > > > http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1201116/How- > > Capas-camera-does-lie-The-photographic-proof-iconic-Falling-So > > ldier-image-staged.ht > > > > > I think you - and the loathsome Daily Mail - are taking a step too far > there. How do you make the connection from changing his name to be like > Capra to 'that sort of personality is not adverse to fudging'? Millions of > people have changed their names, especially refugees, and had all sorts of > reasons to choose what they wanted - what's wrong with choosing something > that sounds like Capra in order to give people a warm impression of you? > What would you have preferred him to choose? Hitler? Mussolini? Stalin? > > The Independent newspaper (UK) published the photographs yesterday and the > sequence from Capa's film compared to the modern sequence looks quite > convincing. But there is also a lot of very convincing evidence that the > soldier has been identified as someone who was killed on the date the > picture was taken. > > There are a lot of possibilities other than fakery. Capa himself did not > caption the picture - that was done by the editors of the magazine that > first published it, and they may well have jumped to unwarranted conclusions > about what it showed. Should Capa have corrected that later? Yes, if he knew > it was wrong. But who's to say he knew it was wrong? He was moving around a > lot of places, shooting a lot of film - often he and Taro didn't even know > which of them had taken which picture. To expect them to remember the places > and dates of every picture they took is ridiculous under those > circumstances. He probably didn't even know he'd captured this image, so > there's no reason why it should have stuck in his memory. > > Capa was undoubtedly a self-mythologiser, but in my view you can't make the > leap from that and from this new evidence, to calling the picture a set-up > and a fake, which both imply long-term deception by Capa, until you have > evidence that Capa himself intentionally deceived people, or allowed them to > be deceived, throughout his career. The rest of his honourable career seems > to me to be strong evidence against that possibility. > > Bob > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
