Capa and Fieldwork

There are reasons why the New York Times is the "newspaper of record" in the United States of America, and why only a couple of newspapers (The New Yorker, maybe on its better days the Christian Science Monitor and The Economist (of London) are even close to being equals. The best newspapers (and the term can apply to weeklies) get beyond the fan-pandering that usually fills the inside of too much of the American daily press and deal with issues that are infinitely more real and interesting than what someone was (or wasn't) wearing at any given point in their evening party cycle. Give me a break; there's real stuff to be discussed, and enjoyed. So try the NYT article on Robert Capa, and what's happening in terms of some of his photographic legacy. It's an intriguing, and more, a meaningful article, if you can follow the link.


The lesson about the newspaper's primacy is driven home again today, with a quite wonderful article on Robert Capa, whose name is almost never mentioned without adding "the famed war photographer." It's about the discovery of three boxes of Capa negatives (some 3,500 all told), stashed in Mexico City for decades. (Just how they got there is a story in itself; a journey begun in 1939.) The negatives chronicle a crucial era of his work (and that of his sometime-partner and colleague, Gerda Tero), from the Spanish Civil War era when Capa's photograph of "The Falling Soldier" was taken (itself a subject of no small controversy).


Capa was more than an "important figure" in photography, he would go on with a handful of colleagues to form Magnum Photo (which sounds like something out of Zoolander, but was, in fact, arguably the most important ensemble of photographic talent in the twentieth century). His work from the 1930s was legendary, and with reason; even a glance at the archive of photographs that's includes with the Times article makes it obvious why he was larger than life. He was a handsome and an amazing guy, but he was the essence of a certain kind of photography.


This is important for any number of good reasons, not least because it's a reminder that Capa was a field guy, and what Randy Kennedy, who wrote the article, calls Capa's "mantra" wasn't a bad one for geographers: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough." Does that speak to you?