Did Capa Fake it?

[Brian Sims]

Interesting piece in the NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/ar...a.html?_r=1&hp

[Greg Lockrey]

Wasn't this posted in the Lounge?

[Ben Syverson]

The debate over this photo seems to never end. Did he fake it? Did he not? The consensus (and evidence, finally) seems to say "yes."

Perhaps that makes it an "activist" photo, as it was extremely successful in drawing attention to the Spanish civil war. If so, obviously he breached the ethics of photojournalism. But what about the larger ethical implications? Would you tell a white lie if you thought it would save lives? There's no way the photo would have gotten such exposure if he had presented it in an art or editorial context.

Besides, even when photojournalists take 100% "truthful" photographs, there is still an implicit expression of opinion in how the photograph is taken and presented. Is a photo of a wide eyed starving child any less "activist" or manipulative than Falling Soldier? What if it's the only starving child in the country? The camera itself is objective and innocent, but the photographer never is.

Anyway, it's not black & white (no pun intended).

Edgar Martins, however, is another story. There's a photographer misrepresenting himself not in the service of lifesaving, but of visual symmetry. I would have no problem whatsoever if he represented his works as fine art photographs, but for him to allow them to appear in a photojournalist context is simply fraudulent.

[Brian Sims]

Wasn't this posted in the Lounge?
__________________
Greg Lockrey

Lounge?

[D. Bryant]

Interesting piece in the NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/ar...a.html?_r=1&hp

Yawn. This ones been done to death here and there.

Don Bryant

[r_a_feldman]

Lounge?

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...ad.php?t=51408

[Brian Sims]

Oh. I blocked the lounge when that became an option (I actually thought we had just gotten rid of it). When I saw the NYT piece, I first searched our site for Capa and nothing came up (I guess when you block the lounge, you block any search of it.). So I posted the link because I thought some might find it interesting. You guys just crack me up sometimes....

[paulr]

It all seems strange to me ... a friend of mine who worked in the Magnum archives said that someone showed her Capa's negatives. There were multiple versions of the falling soldier image! She said this wasn't some dirty secret; they freely showed it to her and anyone.

Now Magnum argues for its authenticity as journalism?

I suppose there's a chance my friend was mistaken, but that would be a hard one to mix up.