In memories of Robert Capa (October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954)

To the man who invented himself and “for superlative photography requiring exceptional courage and enterprise abroad."

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Robert Capa

All the world’s a stage, and all men and women are merely players and thus the stage of war and tug are manipulated by strings of marionettes and puppeteer of the messy, polluted, uncontrolled world we are living in now. Joseph Conrad said, “He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it!”

And that was it.

Dog eats dog. Man kills man.

"'The horror! The horror!" Joseph Conrad continued saying.

The psychological portraiture of war exalts influential hurt and contagious misery, embarking on an exodus journey of violent baggage. War after war, the orgy of brutal savagery in humankind spells chaotic passion and communal violence on Earth.

Bombs, slaying, stained iodine of dried blood… Flies manifest on open flesh.

War photography: A dialogue of vile despondency between subjects and the angry world via the lens of important social documentation; a prism of greed and ego from the dictators versus the sufferings of the citizens of the world.

War photography and their photographers

The first war photography started by Mathew Brady in 1862. This 1st civil war photographer made his own history through his silver gelatine pictures when he displayed the very-few-of-its-kind collection of photographs (then) titled, The Dead of Antietan.

While Robert Capa (October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was the first to die on the battlefield in the course of duty at Indochina, joining the fate of his Polish fiancée, Gerda Taro who died on the battlefield of Spain. The most famous war photographer of the 20th century, Robert Capa covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and his last, the First Indochina War.

"Robert Capa, the impetus behind the founding of Magnum, stepped on a land mine and was killed while photographing there in 1954, the first of many American correspondents to be killed in Indochina.”

How real is the death scene and how immaculate are the tears? How true the colour is the blood and how raw is the wound of misery? How far can these evidences be telecasted and shown to the rest of the world?

The secular credentials of war photography lies in the divinity of sensitivity and truth, albeit Oscar Wilde mentioned that the pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. Looking through the eyes with un-bias, un-sided and un-doctrined insight: among the many who went to war to show the public what damaged has been done to humankind on the other flipside of the modern world we are living in now.

During the World War 2 in 1945, the photograph of Russian’s conquer over Berlin by Soviet Photojournalist,Yevgeny Khaldei, Germany was manipulated based on subjectivity of aesthetic and public thought. When the Russian soldier was forking the Russia flag on the earth of Berlin, what the photo captured was not the victory of the conquer but the incidents which folded prior to that victory: the soldier’s hands was seen to be cuffed by several watches, stolen and robbed from the Germans.

"Tass, the Soviet news agency, proceeded to manipulate the Soviet document yet again. The lower soldier had a watch on each wrist, which officials thought made him look like a criminal;one had to be removed in the negative. Mr. Khaldei himself later played around with clouds and smoke to change the drama quotient. Even history is not always what it seems." reported Vicki Goldberg on 1997 in The New York Times.

Truth was hidden and the victory stench with acts of communism.

Bert Hardy, Korean war photographer, shot a group of abused and mistreated political prisoners being mistreated who were crouching and chained like prideless animals in massacre. Bert Hardy, together with fellow journalist, James Cameron, concludes that they were going to be unreasonably executed. They then sought and seek emergency aid from United Nations and the Red Cross in vain. Publication of this news was adamantly declined. Twice.

To quote from Brian Joseph Davis, photo-based artist, “War, by its very nature, is spectacle—a grand staged execution—and staged photos are often the only images we are allowed to see. The purpose of these images is, under closer scrutiny, the same purpose behind vacation photos—proof of adventure and dominance over an exotic locale.”

From Russell Miller's book Magnum: 'I always thought that soldiers running up and down hills firing at each other was the most boring aspect of what actually happened in Vietnam. What was really important ... was the efforts by one society to subjugate another society and the resistance of the subjugated.'

So what do one expect from war photography? How do one depict a safe and politically correct photography? What is allowed to be seen: what can you see? And cannot?

(To be continued...)

This article has been divided into two parts. Catch the last part of War: The Visual Dialogue next week.

Bianca Zen

© 2006 by TAXI Design Network. All rights reserved.