Review: Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection

Following on from Linfield’s review of Robert Capa’s work in Cruel Radiance, I was fortunate to find this tome of a text in the university library, nearly 1000 images in 600 pages covering Capa’s entire 22 year career.  Presented thus it seems so slight.  It helps to recall that photography was not always a near instant process of shoot, edit in camera, and upload.  It might have taken weeks before images were processed and published.  Sometimes they might not have been seen at all.  Two examples worth noting from Capa’s life are shots from Omaha Beach, the US Army landing in Normandy in which Capa participated at great risk to his own life.  All but 11 images of the landing were destroyed by a careless lab worker in London, while images of US soldiers abusing German captives were prohibited from being published by US military censors.

Linfield discusses Capa as counterpoint to modern photographic depictions of suffering and as an example of the politically engaged artist.  His partisanship is quite evident in his work, which documents the bravery and suffering of the ant-fascist movements of mid-20th century Europe.  Linfield is correct in describing much of his work as focused on life behind the lines, but he was most surely not afraid of depicting death, as many photos in this collection attest.  I suspect that during his life there was less of a market for such images, and perhaps greater sensitivity to depictions of corpses, especially ones badly damaged by the traumas of war.

Capa claimed he had no style, that he was just a journalist, a guy with a camera at the right time and place.  His images are certainly unaffected, but nevertheless seen here together in such large number clearly show that he had a way with people, an approachable character that allowed him to shoot strangers and often elicit relaxed poses and demeanor.

This book is perhaps the definitive collection of Capa’s life work.  The editors looked through all of the photographer’s known contact sheets, 70,000 images in total.  Nearly half of the 1000 included in this collection have been published for the first time. Paper and printing are high quality, and perhaps the only drawback is the difficulty in holding a book of this size and weight.

#