The falling man wearing light shirt and pants, carrying a weapon in his right hand, the falling man extends his arms to get someone or something, or say how big your surprise, although the expression on his face belies these views, the man who falls, falls in broad daylight, the sky gray blue and gray apartment imagine the yellow grass. The man seems to fall forever falling on the photo pinned him. The man falls, say, and deny, drops dead. The man falling is an image with name and author, called The death of one militant and captured the legendary Robert Capa (1) during 1936, the Cerro Muriano Córdoba front of the English Civil War.
"All who have heard of that war can bring to mind the grainy black and white image of a man in white shirt sleeves rolled it falls back on a mound, with his right arm thrown back while the gun leaves his hand about to fall, dead, on its own shadow, "says Susan Sontag in the face of suffering of others.
The Capa image was first published in Life magazine in the United States. The man continues to fall in odd-numbered page, a table that occupies more than half the available space, next to another man smiling winner and recommend the use of a cosmetic product named Vitalis. Vitalis, vital, above, in print, it reads life (life) and in this context man is dying down.
In this and other photos are said to have been armed, that spontaneity was a story to publishers and readers, in the case of the militia, those who argue that the taking is real given name and surname to the man falling: Federico Borrell Garcia (Taino). But years later a new photographic sequence is presented as evidence supporting the tessitura of a staging, and as if that were not enough already, a 2007 documentary film, Shadow of the Iceberg, mentioned the possibility that besides being pose, the photography has taken the wife of Capa, Gerda Taro.
"It should be that there are several pictures of Taino reached a militant allegedly by the bullets, there are also simulating shooting from the trenches. Capa himself implicitly acknowledges that the militants were posing for him and if they were why the photo of the fallen militiaman might not be a pose? (...) Of course the topic is open, and this will probably in time, but something is total agreement that whatever the end result in nothing tarnishes the glory of Capa as the best war photographer in history and in no way tarnish the glory of "Taino", or the tens of thousands as "Taino", died in defense of their ideals. " The fragment here reproduced belongs to Miguel Pascual Mira and published in the Journal Sudestada in July 2006, 70 years after the man fell.
"Capturing a death when in fact is happening and to embalm always something that can only do the cameras, and images, the work of photographers in the field, the moment of death (or just before) are among the most celebrated photographs of war and often published, "says Susan Sontag in her book Regarding the Pain of others, in this work, the authenticity of the photo that Eddie Adams (2) taken at the time the security chief South Vietnam to execute a Vietcong suspect, in 1968, the paper argues that there is no doubt, but suspicion about the motives.
The photo became an icon of anti-war, the brutality of war, the lack of control that the Americans had on their wards to the south. However, Adams never endorsed the reading of that image was made and she came to question his job as a reporter: "The general killed a Vietcong gun. I killed the general with my camera. The photograph is a weapon world's most powerful. People believe them, but the photos lie, even without manipulation. They are only half truths. " The reason of the bitter words of the photographer must be sought in the subsequent history of the making of this picture. Susan Sontag's understanding, the Vietnamese police fired to the press and probably never would have executed in this way the prisoner had not been a camera to record it. Instead Adams knows first hand what had happened before and after the publication of that image. The Associated Press agency he worked for the coverage of the war, ordered the reporter in the footsteps of the Vietnamese general whose image had been round the world again and again. "That guy is a hero," it later when it was inevitable that one face is associated with everything bad that was in the race, with bestiality, blood.
"What the photograph did not ask was: What would you have done have been the general at that time and it was you who caught the alleged bad guy after it had blown up one, two or three American soldiers? "said Adams, who for the rest of his life he apologized to General Nguyen Ngoc Loan and his family because of the stigma that they recorded with that image. (3)
Senses
The photographer is an eye looking to show, the photography is not only the image he sees, but also the one planned, which was expected, you sweat, which suffered, and is also the image that interprets who stands before her, and cut out of context, she is now a reality, a present continuous with lateral boundaries. A window, perhaps, but not us could look away, not let us back in time, the words spoken when a click warned that the image was already in the film, if we had that possibility, then we could uncertain whether Capa's photo was staged or not, if the Vietnamese General acted induced by the presence of the cameras and we are outraged to see that white South African photographer for almost an hour remains motionless, looking through the camera to the vulture stalking a black girl undernourished.
The white man of the hypothetical window is called Kevin Carter (4) and took, in 1993, one of the most striking images of injustice behind the criminal logic of war and capitalism in a class society and rampant. In reaching this decision, in this portrait of the aberrations suffered from Sudan, the reporter was guided by the same logic of the result and the benefit: not only assisted the girl in the photo, but, after make the first shots, waited for 20 minutes to see if the vulture wings and opened the register, thus making more impact. The vulture did not break the wings, Carter left and the photo was published in the New York Times. Months later, won the Pulitzer. Haunted by remorse that he generated his most famous photo, taken together with other personal circumstances (say the brief biographies that circulate on the Web) Carter committed suicide.
Is it possible to stay ahead in this table for more than twenty minutes, for just a minute? What are the boundaries that separate professional person? Some say that the limit is the profession itself, the passion for work and duty to tell and show, and even find positive aspects to the positions as those of South Africa (5) Others, myself included, say that there is boundaries: professional person are one and the ethical values \u200b\u200bone reaches as well.
However, Carter's attitude when taking the picture, it is (an extreme example) the concept of Virginia Wolf that makes the book by Susan Sontag and essayist sentence with the words: "No one should assume "we" when the subject is looking at others' pain. "
say the images are worth a thousand words or more. Of course sometimes the value is added, as in the case of coating, if it is true that it was an assembly-or is rejected by those who value it generates, as did Adams and his picture of Vietnam, or directly valuation exceeds any attempt because there are no words to explain or equalize, as did Carter making in Sudan.
Three moments of death, a perhaps false, another flying but still latent, only a certain yet what the photographer had not intended to tell.
