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PROVING THAT ROBERT CAPA'S "FALLING SOLDIER" IS GENUINE: A DETECTIVE STORY


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When I began the research for my biography of Robert Capa, in 1980, one problem I inherited was that of dealing with an allegation of fakery regarding Capa’s 1936 photograph of a Spanish Republican (Loyalist) militiaman collapsing into death, the so-called Falling Soldier. (Its proper title is "Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936." In this article the photograph will be referred to as The Falling Soldier; the man in the photograph, when not referred to by his name, will be called the Falling Soldier [intentionally not italicized].) The picture is one of Capa's two most famous (the other being of a GI landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day), and it has often been hailed as the greatest war photograph of all time.

The allegation had first surfaced in 1975, in a book by Phillip Knightley, a British journalist and historian, about how war correspondents -- ever since the beginning of the profession, during the Crimean War of the 1850s -- had often distorted the truth.

-Robert Whelan

This is an interesting story of righting the historical record through disproving allegations made against a photographer with forensics.
spoonieday

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