Robert Capa War Photography - The Revolution?
Robert Capa was a Hungarian photographer born in 1913, he was
best known for his war photography and for being one of the co-founders of
Magnum Photos which was the first ever agency for freelance photographers
around the world. Capa documented the Spanish civil war, the Chinese resistance
to Japan, World War 2, the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach, Russia and Israel and
the first Indochina War where he unfortunately died whilst on assignment for
Life Magazine.
Robert Capa hated war and hated seeing the pain and suffering around him – not being able to do anything about it. And I think that through his war photography and journalism he was trying to show how war destroyed lives, took peoples human rights away, I think he wanted to show the cold reality of what was going on and although war photography had been done before, Robert Capa’s use of a camera and being able to get close enough and have bullets flying past him whilst trying to capture these moments was a bit of a revolution in war photography and at that time it’s what set him aside from other war photographers.
You can see with Capa’s images they were not staged (apart from maybe the controversial image of ‘The Falling Solider’ from the Spanish Civil War where there has been much debate and I believe proven or decided that the image was in fact staged).
All of Capa’s war images were shot in black and white and on much more compact cameras than what his predecessors like: Matthew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and Timothy O’Sullivan had available to them in the 1800’s. It gave him the freedom to move with the camera and capture some form of movement and action on the battlefield. I think that a prime example of that are the few images that survived from the Omaha Beach D-Day landings during WWII.
The D-Day images captured the moment so well regardless of the shaky appearance, but I think that’s what gives the images life, because you can truly imagine how scared every single solider was getting off the boats and running on to Omaha Beach strait in to gun fire from the enemy. I really feel that they captured so much reality and truth and these images really brought to life the terror and uncertainty of war. The images were so descriptive with its content that Steven Spielberg used them as a point of reference in the making of the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’ so that the scene of the D-Day landing looked as real as it could and Capa’s images captured that moment so well.
Robert Capa hated war and hated seeing the pain and suffering around him – not being able to do anything about it. And I think that through his war photography and journalism he was trying to show how war destroyed lives, took peoples human rights away, I think he wanted to show the cold reality of what was going on and although war photography had been done before, Robert Capa’s use of a camera and being able to get close enough and have bullets flying past him whilst trying to capture these moments was a bit of a revolution in war photography and at that time it’s what set him aside from other war photographers.
You can see with Capa’s images they were not staged (apart from maybe the controversial image of ‘The Falling Solider’ from the Spanish Civil War where there has been much debate and I believe proven or decided that the image was in fact staged).
All of Capa’s war images were shot in black and white and on much more compact cameras than what his predecessors like: Matthew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and Timothy O’Sullivan had available to them in the 1800’s. It gave him the freedom to move with the camera and capture some form of movement and action on the battlefield. I think that a prime example of that are the few images that survived from the Omaha Beach D-Day landings during WWII.
The D-Day images captured the moment so well regardless of the shaky appearance, but I think that’s what gives the images life, because you can truly imagine how scared every single solider was getting off the boats and running on to Omaha Beach strait in to gun fire from the enemy. I really feel that they captured so much reality and truth and these images really brought to life the terror and uncertainty of war. The images were so descriptive with its content that Steven Spielberg used them as a point of reference in the making of the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’ so that the scene of the D-Day landing looked as real as it could and Capa’s images captured that moment so well.
I saw this mistake more than once, the penultimate photo was not captured by Capa. The picture was captured by Marc Riboud.
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