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|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2002-10-16
Review: 'Heart of Spain: Robert Capa's Photographs of the Spanish Civil War'
What Photographers Should Be Reading
By Jim McNay, Brooks Institute of Photography
"Heart of Spain" is a book of pictures from the work in Spain that focused Capa's mind and heart and earned him the war photographer title that dogged him throughout his career. This is probably the largest collection of Capa's work from Spain photographers will have seen. It certainly reveals why his pictures from this conflict caught the eye of editors.
Capa was all over this story. He was in the middle of the action, right at the shoulders of fighters under fire, running beside them across hills and into trenches. He was in the cities as they were bombed, from Bilbao in the north to Barcelona in the east. He followed the refugees telling the story sometimes by looking at the people, sometimes by looking at a simple trail of discarded belongings littering the road after they passed.
Most of all Capa looked at the faces of the people, revealing moments of tension, pride, and heartache. When the International Brigade, a multinational force including participants from the U.S. who had come to aid the Republican side, was eventually ordered out of the country, everyone knew it would lead to their side's defeat. The pictures reveal the pride at the cause they have taken up and the frustration at having to leave before the last battle. We can read the story of what is to come on the faces of the departing fighters.
After Capa's death John Steinbeck described what Capa brought to picture making. "Capa knew what to look for and what to do with it when he found it. He knew, for example, that one cannot photograph war, because it is largely an emotion. But he did photograph that emotion by shooting beside it. He could show the horror of a whole people in the face of a child. His camera caught and held emotion."
Heart of Spain
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Like the reissued Capa autobiography, "Slightly Out of Focus," this volume also addresses Capa's most famous picture of the "Falling Soldier" and the myth of it being an arranged photograph. The recent clarification of this issue, even down to the naming of the soldier in the picture, receives the most extensive coverage in "Heart of Spain."
This book also include essays to help the new reader understand what the conflict in Spain meant to the world and to both Capa and his beloved partner Gerda Taro who died during the conflict. In his essay Capa biographer Richard Whelan tells us, "The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, in July 1936, finally gave anti-fascists an opportunity to confront fascism militarily. Capa and Taro both believed that it was absolutely vital for them to use their cameras to win worldwide support for the Spanish Republic and the anti-fascist cause."
For those who read looking for the how-did-he-do-it answer, perhaps Capa's best recommendation, beyond the "get close" admonition, is found in one of the captions near the back of "Heart of Spain." Whelan reports when Capa was asked if he had advice for aspiring photographers, he said simply, "Like people and let them know it."
It was an approach that served him well during the mere forty years he had to put it into practice.
Related Links:
Book: Heart of Spain
Jim McNay's Member Page
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