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.

Review: Linfield, Susie (2010). The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Chicago University Press. Ch 7-9

 Chapters 7:  Robert Capa: The Optimist

This last third of the text is the most challenging.  Linfield profiles three photographers (Capa, Natchwey, and Peress) to highlight different approaches to the problems raised in the previous sections.  She quotes quite extensively, describing numerous photos, but showing very few.  In the absence of pictures, or an appreciation of the work based on extensive viewing, it is impossible to appreciate her reading of how these image makers deal with issues of suffering and truth.

Capa was one of the first great war photographers, winner of numerous awards, and highly respected by peers and public alike.  He was, as she points out, never described as a voyeur or a pornographer.  While ostensibly known as a war photographer, he specialized in work depicting life behind the lines.  He did not point his camera at brutality.  He in fact declined to shoot the liberated extermination camps of Europe.  This she finds more telling of the times and the state of politics, war, and violence before midcentury.

Review: Nakano, Masataka (2000). Tokyo Nobody. Little More: Tokyo.

Tokyo Nobody reminds me of New Year 1989.  I had been in Japan less than six months and wanted to get out of the small city where I was living for a visit to Tokyo.  What a better time to visit than New Year, when there would be all kind of excitement in such a huge international city.  It turned out to be quite the opposite and a wonderful learning opportunity.

Japan celebrates the same year end holidays as in the west.  They make a big to-do about Christmas, even though their traditional holiday is the new year.  Appearances, though, can be deceiving.  In spirit, the holidays are reversed:  New Year is the quiet family holiday spent at home with family and relatives, while Christmas is a time for parties, friends, and colleagues.  Had I known this I wouldn’t have been so eager to visit Tokyo.

Review: Linfield, Susie (2010). The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Chicago University Press. Ch 3-6

A Jewish woman walks toward the gas chambers with three young children after going through the selection process on the ramp at Aushwitz-Birkenau. May 1944. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Yad Vashem.

Chapter Three:  Warsaw, Lodz, Auschwitz: In the Waiting Room of Death

With Chapter Three Linfield begins an exploration of Place and Event, including the Nazi extermination camps, China’s Cultural Revolution, Sierra Leone’s civil war, and images from the wars of the Middle East.

Beginning with the Holocaust she examines the arguments surrounding the very powerful images of suffering and cruelty, specifically those produced by the Nazis themselves.  She observes that such images are some of the most morally vexing as they depict people soon to be murdered.  They demonstrate quite clearly that photographs in themselves have no moral power or authority. (And in a footnote - p72 - that such images published in wartime generally did not provoke the hoped for responses.) What does it mean, then, to look at such photos?  Should we look?  If so, how?

Review: Linfield, Susie (2010). The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence. Chicago University Press. Ch 1 & 2

From the copyright page (iv):  SUSIE LINFIELD is director of the cultural reporting and criticism program at New York University, where she is an associate professor of journalism. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Bookforum, the Boston Review, Dissent, and other publications. She was formerly an editor at American Film, the Washington Post, and the Village Voice.”

Chapter 1:  A Little History of Photography Criticism; or, Why Do Photography Critics Hate Photography?

There is much in the chapter to be reviewed and of the writers she discusses I have read only bits of Sontag and Barthes, two seminal writers in photographic theory who have an unfortunate disregard for the reader.  Linfield asserts that while these two have done much to shape a negative opinion of photos and photography, their suspicion and distrust can be traced back to Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin and, through him, Bertolt Brecht, who she holds primarily responsible for having first articulated a mistrust of the the photograph based on mistrust of emotions.  She argues that modern critics fail to particularize, to take account of Brecht’s situation and concerns in interwar Germany.