The Fallen Soldier

In January I posted an item regarding the discovery of what was described as the “holy Grail” of photojournalism - the discovery of a large cache of photos and negatives of photos taken by the great Robert Capa.

It’s enormous importance aside it was hoped that the discovery would settle the one question that has dogged Capa's legacy: was 'The Falling Soldier,' staged? I was therefore interested to see in today’s Independent that an exhibition at the Barbican in London aims to have the last word on the matter. It will show for the first time in the UK every image taken by Capa the same day.

The Falling Soldier, officially known as Death of a Loyalist Militiaman, made 22-year-old Capa's reputation but for years arguments have raged as to whether he set up the picture or whether he had in fact captured a soldier meeting his violent death. An audit of all the negatives held by the International Center of Photography in New York has turned up previously unknown film taken by both Capa and his lover Gerda Taro the same day the Falling Soldier was photographed including other images of the soldier, Federico Borrell Garcia, a 24-year-old textile worker. The new material shows, the curators believe, that Garcia was shot, but not in the heat of battle. They believe that a re-enactment of events at the front line near Cordoba attracted enemy interest.

The new images were researched by Capa's biographer Richard Whelan. After Mr Whelan's death last May, his work was taken over by Cynthia Young, who curated the exhibition. "There are new photographs. They had been lying in the archive for years. Richard was going through all the pre-1939 images and all of these early negatives and contact sheets were in a mess. They were misdated over years. But he recognised these as being taken on the day of the Falling Soldier. No one knew that these negatives existed. It was assumed they had all gone missing. There were 35mm prints taken from Capa's Leica and Rolleiflex negatives, the camera used by Gerda Taro, which proves beyond doubt for the first time that she was with him on that day.

"There have been various theories about whether the soldier was actually shot in battle. Looking at the photos it is clear that it is not the heat of battle. It is likely the soldiers were carrying out an exercise either for Capa or themselves. The images are ordered according to the numbers on the back of the negatives, so it's the best sequence we can put together and from that we can deduce the story."

There is no doubt the soldier was shot, however. Mr Whelan believed Garcia died almost instantly from a bullet to the heart.

So it now seems that the Falling Soldier was indeed genuine. That it was taken during a re-enactment is of no consequence – we are looking at the days before embedded journalists and the like. The Falling Soldier is an iconic image and will remain so. The exhibition is in my diary as a must-see event.

Robert Capa’s lost treasure trove found again

An article in yesterday’s Observer will have more than piqued the interest of photographers (from the top professionals to rank amateurs like me) worldwide. A lost treasure trove containing thousands of negatives by Robert Capa, has been recovered. Quite rightly hailed as the as the 'holy grail' of photojournalism, the discovery of the long-mourned cache of photographs after almost 70 years has sent shockwaves through the photography world.

'This is the formative work of a photographer who, in a century defined by warfare, played a pivotal role in defining how war was seen, bringing its horrors nearer than ever,' said Brian Wallis, chief curator at the International Centre of Photography in midtown Manhattan, which was founded by Robert Capa's brother, Cornell.

The discovery of the pictures is being hailed as a huge event, partly because it is hoped that the negatives could settle once and for all the question that has dogged Capa's legacy: whether what may be his most famous picture - and one of the most famous war photographs of all time - was staged. Known as 'The Falling Soldier,' the sequence of photographs shows a Spanish Republican militiaman reeling backwards at what appears to be the instant a bullet strikes his chest or head, on a hillside near Córdoba in 1936. When the picture was first published in the French magazine Vu, it created a sensation and helped crystallise support for the Republican cause.

Doubts about the authenticity of the sequence emerged after Phillip Knightley pointed out in his book, The First Casualty, that at the moment of death the soldier was still clutching his rifle. Knightly also argued that a companion photograph, apparently showing the same soldier lying on the ground, proved the photograph was staged. Richard Whelan, Capa's biographer, later made a persuasive case that the photograph was not faked but doubts have persisted. A negative of the shot has never been found and the discovery of one could end the debate.

The lost negatives were photographs that Capa took during the Spanish Civil War. They were left behind in a Paris darkroom after the photographer fled Europe for America in 1939. He assumed they were lost during the Nazi invasion and he died in 1954, on assignment in Vietnam, still believing that to be the case. Then, in 1995, Jerald R Green, a professor at Queens College, part of the City University of New York, received a letter from a Mexico City film-maker saying he had inherited three suitcases of negatives from his aunt and had identified the contents as Capa's masterpieces. Last week, after years of negotiations over where they should be kept, the legal title to the negatives was transferred by the film-maker, who has asked to remain anonymous, to the Capa estate.

'The full story of how the negatives made their way to Mexico might never be known but Capa apparently asked his darkroom manager, a Hungarian photographer named Imre Weisz, to save his negatives in 1939 or 1940, when Capa was in New York and feared his work would be destroyed,' said Wallis.