Posted on 05/10/2009 2:05:34 PM PDT by JoeProBono
Experts who examined a cache of long-lost photos from the 1930s Spanish Civil War say it yielded a lot of new information, but failed to solve the biggest mystery whether legendary photojournalist Robert Capa took the famous picture of a man at the instant he was killed by a bullet.
Answering that question was a principal goal of curators at the New York-based International Center of Photography when they first delved into the so-called Mexican Suitcase, a collection of 4,300 frames shot by Capa, his companion Gerda Taro and close friend David "Chim" Seymour. The negatives, long believed to have been lost, were rediscovered in Mexico in 1995. In December 2007, the aging black-and-white, 35 mm film arrived at the ICP in three cardboard boxes. Capa's legacy includes the so-called "falling soldier" photo, showing a Spanish Republican militiaman at the apparent moment he was hit by a fatal bullet.
Taken in September 1936, the third month of the war, the iconic picture has stirred controversy for decades, with Capa supporters defending it as authentic, but some critics suggesting it was too perfect not to have been staged. ICP experts came up empty in their search for the photo's negative. They found nothing in the collection that shows whether it definitely came from Capa's camera or whether it depicts a spontanous incident rather than one staged for dramatic effect.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
It seems most likely the photo is genuine:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/robert-capa/in-love-and-war/47/
According to the above link, the fallen soldier’s name was Federico Borrell García, and he was killed in battle on September 5, 1936.
I know that a camera was filming and got the same shot but to get it the instant of the highest drama is amazing.
Baddabing, baddaboom. Problem solved.
I was thinking about trying that with some of my great grandfather’s old negatives. I don’t know how well it would work but I have a flatbed scanner and CS3 to play around with.
You're too good honey
Capa was on of the true greats. He actually landed with the first wave on D-day and subsequently had almost all his negatives destroyed in the darkroom by a technician. He was so not a prima donna he just shrugged it off and considered one of the surviving images all the better for the damage.
I don’t think it’s posed.
nope. with all the film shot on the front over the years, somebody is bound to get something like that on film sooner or later
Even with the scarcity of cameras back in the 1930s, the majority of photographs taken back then were taken with cameras.
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