Comments on: Watch this space: Robert Capa

By: Demon

Demon — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:47:53 +0000

George Orwell had arrived in Hollywood in the early 30s, hoping to become a big star acting the role of a stereotyped English toff but he ended up an extra in the Spanish movie, along with Ernest Hemingway, who played an amusing drunkard.

He felt so guilty about it that he wrote 1984 as a disguised version of the truth.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:10:30 +0000

Everyone knows Guernica is about the poor dental care available in Spain at the time.

By: Markup

Markup — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:47:14 +0000

‘’Finally, the truth is out! Turns out nobody died in the Spanish Civil War.’’

Ah yes, but 12 were harmed in the making of the photograph, and another few thousands in the staging for the painting. Accidents happen.

By: Yan

Yan — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:21:49 +0000

Finally, the truth is out! Turns out nobody died in the Spanish Civil War.

By: david tiley

david tiley — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:08:47 +0000

Unfortunately, photos and films make a false claim about accuracy. In reality (ha)the mediating processes of selection and competition make a simple minded correspondence impossible. It seems a trivial point, but we are all caught by the urge to say, “I saw this with my own eyes, so it must be true.”

In fact, photography testifies to the basic existence of events, as per abb1 above, but the rest is interpretation. However, questions about the lighting of the father’s face as he carries his dead child mean diddlysquat compared to the monstrous reality of the actual event.

If these were drawings, as we had before the widespread reproduction of photos, or still do have in some courts, we would understand exactly the reality status of the image.

We are tangled up in a kind of voyeuristic fascination – a desire for a proof positive – which is represented exactly by the Capa picture. Wow, that is the exact moment of death..?

By: abb1

abb1 — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:11:59 +0000

I like this photograph, has it been publicized much in the mainstream western media? Also this one.

By: novakant

novakant — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 03:03:41 +0000

@19 – I refreshed my memory a bit on this matter and to be precise there were two claims made about the authenticity/significance of the “cheering Palestinians”. The first one was made by a Brazilian media student who claimed that CNN was using old footage from 1991. This was initially covered by indymedia but debunked rather quickly. The second one was made by a journalist of the German TV program Panorama, who had seen the whole unedited AP/Reuters footage and claimed that the footage was edited and framed to give the misleading impression that the whole town was dancing on the streets celebrating 9/11. In reality it was small groups of people celebrating something, but it wasn’t clear from the footage that their joy was related to the attacks. Also a Palestinian woman who featured prominently in the footage claimed she was bribed to cheer in front of the camera and that she deplored the 9/11 attacks. The article is still online here, but only in German. The accompanying video which bolstered these claims seems to be offline unfortunately.

Be that as it may, I’m sure that if Iran nuked Israel a reporter could find, say, a couple of hundred neo-Nazis in Germany, Austria, Poland or wherever who would celebrate such an act – but that wouldn’t really say much about how the population of these countries felt about the issue. Yet the “cheering Palestinians on TV” still feature prominently in the collective memory of some Americans and will have influenced their stance towards the Palestinians as a whole.

@14 I’m for scrutinizing both the media and its critics, but you don’t really need any elaborate theories to do that, indeed, while they might be interesting on philosophical or artistic level, they can be counterproductive on a pratical and political level, since they tend to blur the issues at hand. All that is needed is a bit of basic media competency, journalistic ethics and common sense.

By: Henry (not the famous one)

Henry (not the famous one) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 02:53:11 +0000

And Dorothea Lange’s iconic photo of the Dust Bowl refugee mother was posed. Not faked, but it undercuts the documentary feel of the piece.

By: Gene O'Grady

Gene O'Grady — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:25:55 +0000

I believe it’s fairly well shown that Brady and possibly other photographers rearranged the bodies for some of their shots of the Gettysburg battelfield. Whether that’s faking I have no idea. And the film of the Somme shown for home consumption was definitely (and I think quite ineptly) faked. In one of Buchan’s WWI novels (I think Mr. Standfast, but maybe Greenmantle)there is a scene where Richard Hannay, who is genuinely being chased by German agents, takes refuge in a propaganda documentary that is being filmed to replicate the real war.

By: Beryl

Beryl — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:37:19 +0000

@13 – Sorry, only the “experts” on Indymedia have questioned the footage. A single staged incident could have a disproportionate symbolic value, but there were far too many dancers across the Middle East – indeed, around the world – for photo editors to be in on a global conspiracy. That said, the impact of a dramatic photo is far more important than establishing whether a Jackson Pollack is genuine. So yes, you’re right; authenticity, like the (in)existence of WMDs, is not unimportant.

By: Roy Belmont

Roy Belmont — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:21:52 +0000

The Spanish Civil War was a big fake to begin with. Nothing more than a bunch of Hollywood extras running around the sand dunes north of Ventura CA, pretending to fight fascism, but actually on the payroll of pinko-sympathizing leftist East-European studio heads.
Later the commies tried to paint it as another glaring example of the hypocrisy and treachery of the capitalist ruling classes – the way some of the bravest and most heroic men and women of the time were left strategically hanging in the wind, encouraged by false promises of aid and support which never came, while Fascism’s seven-league boots got spit-shined with the blood of martyrs.
All a pack of lies. Never happened.
Capa spent the whole time in his darkroom in Brooklyn, making up stories and illustrating them with fake images.

By: Markup

Markup — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:20:00 +0000

#14 “I remember clicking through a couple links deep from Instapundit to find some blogger writing that the Downing Street Memo was “probably just another forgery.”

This kind of accusation, with dissemination and frequency over time, actively destroys the public’s ability to trust the media.”

So are you saying that that blogger is probably a liar and that his/her site is part of the media we once would/could have trusted?

The last seven years, let alone other more “reputable” refutations of the DSM, would serve only to bolster your point. Of course that’s just my opinion.

By: Giotto

Giotto — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 20:35:34 +0000

It looks like this one will never go away. The authenticity of the photo has been established several times; in English, Richard Whelan’s extensive investigation of the Capa photo resulted in pretty convincing conclusions that the photo is not faked, convincing, that is, to nearly everybody but Phillip Knightly, who originally claimed that is was fake and, AFAIK, continues to do so with no compelling evidence (if he has changed his mind on this I would love for someone to let me know). Whelan relied on a book self-published in Spain in the 1990s that identified the soldier as a 24-year-old Republican volunteer named Federico Borrel García. The story has received the expected coverage in the photographic press; see American Photographer, May/June 1998; and Aperture, 166 Spring 2002. At this point the issue seems closed, unless the negatives show several versions of this scene, or show the same soldier still alive in a later image on the same roll.

By: ~~~~

~~~~ — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 19:14:58 +0000

I suspect that the idea of faking footage/photographs came up only a few years after the invention of the media.

In 1898 the Edison company re-enacted the execution of captured insurgents by Spanish troops during the Spanish-American war. It used to be on YouTube, but I can’t find it anymore.

By: salient downs

salient downs — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:42:03 +0000

And while some of the postmodern discussions on these matters are quite interesting, I think that when it comes down to it accuracy in journalism is a rather simple concept.

Except… Challenging the authenticity of an image as a diversionary tactic, and overstating any arbitrary or tenuous evidence available for your basis, serves to dilute “authenticity” (or accuracy). It’s counterproductive, although it serves the challenger’s intent to muddy the waters and muddle the audience’s understanding of what they see and hear.

Similarly, authenticity of ownership is fairly important: “people should not steal from each other” is also a rather simple concept. But suppose I go on TV and accuse various people of having stolen their clothes, and as evidence I say they don’t have their receipts anywhere and nobody remembers them making the purchase and so on.

That kind of “challenge” would confuse the audience and plant unreasonable ideas in their heads (…maybe so-and-so really did steal that sweater…) I could claim, “but I am just defending the simple concept that people should purchase their clothing rather than steal it!”

But am I really doing any such thing? You probably can’t prove outright that I am making false accusations, but my behavior should seem suspicious to you.

Likewise, many accusations that right-wingers have directed at media images (“it’s probably fake!”) seem suspicious on their face. Concrete example: I remember clicking through a couple links deep from Instapundit to find some blogger writing that the Downing Street Memo was “probably just another forgery.”

This kind of accusation, with dissemination and frequency over time, actively destroys the public’s ability to trust the media.

Summary point: criticizing these alleged “media critics” is not a post-modern academic exercise. Their questionable (and questionably motivated) accusations deserve just as much scrutiny as journalists and public figures do.