After nearly three-quarters of a century Robert Capa’s “Falling Soldier” picture from the Spanish Civil War remains one of the most famous images of combat ever. It is also one of the most debated, with a long string of critics claiming that the photo, of a soldier seemingly at the moment of death, was faked. Now, a new book by a Spanish researcher asserts that the picture could not have been made where, when or how Capa’s admirers and heirs have claimed.
In “Shadows of Photography,” José Manuel Susperregui, a communications professor at the Universidad del País Vasco, concludes that Capa’s picture was taken not at Cerro Muriano, just north of Córdoba, but near another town, about 35 miles away. Since that location was far from the battle lines when Capa was there, Mr. Susperregui said, it means that “the ‘Falling Soldier’ photo is staged, as are all the others in the series taken on that front.”
Susperregui's basic argument is that the mountainscape in the background of the photo is not from Cerro Muriano, but from a town that was too far away from the fighting to have resulted in the dramatic "death" that Capa captured. There was also the matter of who was being shot. For decades, he went unidentified, a curious omission when Capa was so close to him, and presumably to his comrades. This was actually the first line of attack against the authenticity of "Falling Soldier," but Capa's brother Cornell spent the Seventies searching for the soldier and claimed to have ID'd him as a local anarchist. Problems with this: (1) contemporaneous reports of the man's death do not match the details in the photo and (2) Susperregui has also visited the spot where the anarchist died, and reports that the terrain is nothing like the terrain depicted in "Falling Soldier."
Here's the lame-o excuse proffered by Capa's archivist:
An alternative explanation of the creation of “Falling Soldier,” one which the photography center finds plausible, is that Capa’s photograph, was taken “not during the heat of battle,” as Mr. Hartshorn put it, but during maneuvers, perhaps being done for Capa’s benefit, “and that there was a moment in which the exercise became real, and this is the result of that moment.” He added: “The supposition has always been that there was a sniper” who picked off the militiaman from a distance.
And, the Left is already arguing that, even if Capa didn't capture the truth on that day, he did record a meta-truth, so it doesn't matter whether the image was staged or not:
“Art is always manipulation, from the moment you point a camera in one direction and not another,” Spain’s culture minister, the film director and screenwriter Ángeles González-Sinde, said after visiting the exposition last month. Even if the new controversy proves that the photograph is something other than what Capa and his admirers have always claimed it to be, she suggested, that does not detract from Capa’s genius.
This is why people don't trust artists, intellectuals, or progressives in general. Most people, when they find out someone has lied to them, would be furious. Progressives, on the other hand, start pontificating about Higher Truths and carrying on like Susan Sontag of Sevile with comments like "Art is always manipulation."
And since when was Capa making "art?" His photos were produced and circulated ostensibly to show "what was really happening in Spain," and to drum up support for the Leftist cause.I won't deny he had a knack for finding and photographing arresting images, but he claimed to have been acting as a documentarian, not as an artist. Then again, the Spanish Civil War is long over. Nowadays, the troops are rallied to the Cause by crocodile tears over illegal aliens and the 47 million uninsured, not by fake revolutionaries fighting fake fascism in a far off land. Capa's photo served its purpose, and can now be reborn as art. No one alive now will really care if it was all a mirage.
The Spanish Civil War, like Viet Nam, is one of the Left's wars. They obsess over its "meaning" and fuss over its iconic images like Spock acolytes at a Star Trek convention. And, like Viet Nam, you have to make a real effort to learn what was going on in Spain because the Left has so scrambled the history of the war to cover its own inglorious behavior in conducting (and losing) it. That the "iconic" image of the war has had aspersions case against its veracity for decades only underscored what a load of BS lies at the heart of The Cause.
For many years, Capa's brother Cornell defended the vercity of "Falling Soldier." Cornell died just last year. Even if he died too soon to save his brother's reputation, there are plenty on the Left who are apparently willing to take his place.
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