DOCSLIB.ORG

Falling Soldier

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Falling Soldier Truth in the Making: The Never- ALLING SOLDIER Ending Saga of Capa’s FALLING SOLDIER By Sebastiaan Faber in El Periódico forgivingly called Capa’s before, moreover, two documenta- his past July, around the 73rd trespass un pecado de juventud, or sin ries— Los héroes nunca mueren (2004) anniversary of the outbreak of of youth (Capa was 22 at the time). by Jan Arnold and La sombra del Iceberg Tthe Civil War and 11 days after Others went further. The president (2007) by Hugo Doménech and Raúl the opening of a large Robert Capa of Journalists without Borders ques- Riebenbahuer—had revealed that the exhibit at the Catalan National tioned Capa’s professional integrity. soldier could not have been Borrell. To Museum of Art, the Barcelona news- Some accused him of cheating for the be sure, El Periódico claimed to have paper El Periódico de Catalunya sake of money and fame. But the pho- found additional evidence confirming published what was billed as a stun- tographer had defenders, too, some of Susperregui’s findings and to have ning revelation: Capa’s legendary whom, even while admitting the new located the exact place the photo was photograph of The Falling Soldier was a evidence of the photo’s location, still taken by analyzing the shape of the fake. New evidence, the paper refused to accept that the image was mountain range in the background of claimed, proved beyond the shadow of necessarily false. As others, including one of Capa’s photos taken the same a doubt that the image was not taken Capa’s biographer Richard Whalen, day. But the landscape case had been at Cerro Muriano near Córdoba, as had done before, they maintained that made a month before by a photog- had long been assumed, but some 50 the soldier may have posed for the raphy blogger, José Manuel Serrano kilometers south, near the town of camera, only to be unexpectedly hit by Esparza (see elrectanguloenlamano. Espejo, which Capa and Gerda Taro a live bullet, perhaps from a sniper. blogspot.com). The timing of the had visited previously. This meant As the controversy spread, it was scoop was a bit suspicious. Was El that the militiaman depicted was hard to avoid the impression that Periódico trying to milk the anniver- definitively not Federico Borrell there was something fishy about the sary of the war’s outbreak and take García, an anarchist known to have affair. While El Periódico’s coverage advantage of the opportunity in a been killed at Cerro Muriano. In fact, was picked up in the international slow summer month? because there is no record of any battle press—in the English-language media, action in Espejo when Capa was there, it was featured by the BBC, Time, and *** the paper concluded that the photo the New York Times—it was ignored by The question is not so much where must have been staged. El País, Spain’s largest national paper Capa’s photo was actually taken or if In the following weeks, pundits and leading online news portal for the it’s “real” (whatever that may mean), and columnists in Spain and else- Spanish-speaking world. Moreover, but why so many people continue where pondered this revelation. Was most of El Periódico’s revelations to feel so strongly about it. Different Capa a fraud? Should his whole work were not really new. The data on the explanations suggest themselves. be re-examined? Did he intend to new location were largely based on The debates about the “recovery of deceive the public or did the editors a book by José Manuel Susperregui historical memory” have made clear of Vu and Life, who first published the Etxebeste, a Professor of Audiovisual that the war still matters to present- image and wrote the initial captions— Communications at the University of day Spaniards. There is a widespread with Life claiming Capa had captured Basque Country. This book, Sombras sense that unpleasant truths remain “the moment of death”? An editorial de la fotografía. Los enigmas desvelados to be revealed or, similarly, that some de Nicolasa Ugartemendia, Muerte de un long-held certainties will be exposed Sebastiaan Faber is Chair of Hispanic miliciano, La aldea española y El Lute, for the lies they really are. Andalucía Studies at Oberlin College. His latest had come out months earlier and is currently in uproar over the grave books are Anglo-American Hispanists and had been covered by Giles Tremlett of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca: It is the Spanish Civil War (Palgrave, 2008) and Contra el olvido. El exilio español en Estados in The Guardian (June 14), as well as clear that there are several bodies at Unidos (Universidad de Alcalá, 2009). by El País (July 6 and 7). Some years Continued on page 8 December 2009 THE VOLUNTEER 7 FALLING Continued from page 7 Víznar, near Granada, which Lorca’s (In 1969, the Nobel Prize-winning nov- activists, journalists and documentary biographer Ian Gibson long ago sig- elist Camilo José Cela expressly did makers, or amateur scholars. Those naled as the poet’s burying place. But not dedicate his Civil-War novel San same tensions are at play in the debate conspiracy theories abound. Is one of Camilo, 1936 to “the adventurers from around Capa’s Falling Soldier, in which those bodies really Lorca’s? Was he abroad, Fascists and Marxists, who key contributions have been made secretly disinterred? The Lorca fam- had their fill of killing Spaniards like not just by curators and scholars with ily initially objected to exhumation. rabbits and whom no one had invited access to the full archive, but also by Gibson insists that the issue tran- to take part in our funeral.”) journalists, amateur historians, and scends family considerations: All of Proving Capa’s photo a fake, bloggers armed with little more than Spain deserves to know whether the undermining its legendary status a ticket to an exhibit, a digital camera, remains are Lorca’s or not. The Lorca as an iconic image of the war and and time to scout out locations. But case also raises questions at the heart suggesting that the Hungarian was now there is mutual distrust and sus- of the Capa controversy. Who owns willing to compromise journalis- picion; rather than a collective effort to the story of the Civil War, for example, tic integrity for the sake of political get to the truth, the debate has become and who can make claims to the his- propaganda or to help launch his what the Spaniards call a diálogo de sor- torical truth? career—all this is not just about get- dos, or deaf man’s dialogue. During the Franco years—when ting to the truth. It marks one more historical research in Spain was step in the Spaniards’ gradual re- *** severely hampered by the regime, conquest of the right to shape and tell The book that located The Falling while exiled Republican historians their history. (Interestingly, this sum- Soldier in Espejo is not just about Capa. had no access to archives and often mer’s Capa coverage was an almost It aims to reveal the truth behind lacked institutional support—foreign exclusively Catalan affair, led by the four photographic images, or sets academics, particularly from France, same newspaper that has given ample of images, that have achieved iconic Britain and the United States, took attention to the recent discovery of the status. Besides Capa’s print, it has the lead in shaping the narrative of archives of Agustí Centelles, one of sections on a much-circulated shot of 20th century Spanish history. The the Republic’s official photographers. a forlorn family of Basque refugees first standard studies were penned by Some of Centelles’ most iconic images, (who happen to be the author’s aunt, Pierre Vilar, Raymond Carr, Gabriel including a photo of two guardias de cousin, and great-grandmother), Jackson, Hugh Thomas, Herbert asalto shooting rifles from behind a Eugene W. Smith’s reportage of a Southworth, Stanley Payne and, later pile of dead horses, are, ironically, also Spanish village (published by Life on, by Paul Preston, Helen Graham, known to have been posed.) in 1951), and photos registering the and Carolyn Boyd. While Spanish But this is not the only issue. The capture of the infamous criminal “El intellectuals respected these hispani- recuperación de la memoria histórica, Lute.” The author, J.M. Susperregui, stas, they also felt that this hegemony spearheaded in 2000 by Emilio Silva is driven by a philosophically naïve of foreign scholars was anomalous when he founded the association of but useful principle: press photog- and, in the end, embarrassing. The for- the same name, continues to be con- raphy, he maintains, is either true eigners liked to claim that they were troversial. It has exposed or fueled or false. It either registers actual more objective because they were tensions not just between Left and events as they occurred in reality less involved in Spain’s political rifts. Right and between the Spanish cen- or it seeks to manipulate that real- Others argued that non-Spaniards tral government and the autonomous ity, thus deceiving the audience. The were more prone to romanticize or regions, but also between established only way to find out which is which misread Spanish reality—as had academic historians and non-aca- is by carefully looking at the image many of the foreigners who, like Capa, demics who claim to tell stories about while, at the same time, reconstruct- flocked to Spain after the outbreak of the past that are true and relevant— ing the exact circumstances of its war, and not all of whom were driven including aging victims of repression creation.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Limited Edition Platinum Prints of Iconic Images by Robert Capa
    PRESS RELEASE Contact : Amy Wentz Ruder Finn Arts & Communications Counselors [email protected] / 212-715-1551 Limited Edition Platinum Prints of Iconic Images by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour to be Published in Unique Hand-Bound Collector’s Book Magnum Founders, In Celebration of Sixty Years Provides Collectors Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity to Own Part of Photographic History Santa Barbara, California, June 6, 2007 – Verso Limited Editions, a publisher of handcrafted books that celebrate the work of significant photographers, announced the September 2007 publication of Magnum Founders, In Celebration of Sixty Years . Magnum Founders will include twelve bound and one free-standing rare platinum, estate-stamped prints of iconic images by four visionary photographers who influenced the course of modern photographic history – Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour. The collector’s book celebrates the 60 th anniversary of Magnum Photos, a photographic co- operative founded by these four men and owned by its photographer-members. Capa, Cartier- Bresson, Rodger and Seymour created Magnum in 1947 to reflect their independent natures as both people and photographers – the idiosyncratic mix of reporter and artist that continues to define Magnum today. The first copy of Magnum Founders will be privately unveiled on Thursday, June 21 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York – birthplace of Magnum Photos – during the “Magnum Festival,” a month-long series of events celebrating the art of documentary photography. Magnum Founders will also be on view to the public at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, 41 East 52 nd St., New York, beginning on Friday, June 22.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Towards a Visualisation of the Zionist Sabra 1930-1967 JC Torday
    Towards a visualisation of the Zionist Sabra 1930-1967 JC Torday A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Brighton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2014 1 Declaration I declare that the research contained in this thesis, unless otherwise formally indicated within the text, is the original work of the author. The thesis has not been previously submitted to this or any other university for a degree, and does not incorporate any material already submitted for a degree. Signed JC Torday Dated February 2014 2 Abstract (page 3) Introduction (page 5) Research Approach (page 16) Arab Villages and colonisation (page 24) Cultural Memory and collective memory (page 31) Chapter 1: Theoretical considerations and influences on Zionist photographs (page 39) Critics of and theories about photographs (page 39) Influences on Israeli photography (page 45) Chapter 2: Zionism and colonialism (page 71) The rise of Zionism (page 71) The Iron Wall (page 76) A view from 1947 (page 81) Zionism and anti-Semitism (page 84) Zionism and Fascism (page 87) Zionism and nationalism (page 90) Colonialism (page 93) Colonialism and Zionism (97) Three waves of Jewish immigration (page 102) The Sharon Plan (page 105) Colonialism and photographs (108) Biblical archaeology (page 113) Ethnocentric myth (page 119) Chapter 3: Photography in the Holy Land and beyond (page 121) Beginnings (page 121) Photographs in the Yishuv (page 130) Photographs in Israel (page 147) Chapter 4: The Sabra (page 174) The myth of the Sabra (page
    [Show full text]
  • On Photography, History, and Memory in Spain Hispanic Issues on Line Debates 3 (2011)
    2 Remembering Capa, Spain and the Legacy of Gerda Taro, 1936–1937 Hanno Hardt Press photographs are the public memory of their times; their presence in the public sphere has contributed significantly to the pictures in our heads on which we rely for a better understanding of the world. Some photographs have a special appeal, or an extraordinary power, which makes them icons of a particular era. They stand for social or political events and evoke the spirit of a period in history. They also help define our attitudes towards people or nations and, therefore, are important sources of emotional and intellectual power. War photography, in particular, renders imagery of this kind and easily becomes a source of propaganda as well. The Spanish Civil War (1936–39) was the European testing ground for new weapons strategies by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Both aided their respective sides in the struggle between a Popular Front government— supported mainly by left-wing parties, workers, and an educated middle class—and “Nationalist” forces supported by conservative interests, the military, clergy, and landowners. The conflict resulted in about 500,000 deaths, thousands of exiles, and in a dictatorship that lasted until Franco’s death in 1975. It was a time when large-scale antifascist movements such as the Republican army, the International Brigades, the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification, and anarchist militias (the Iron Column) united in their struggle against the military rebellion led by Francisco Franco. Foreigners joined the International Brigade, organized in their respective units, e.g., the Lincoln Battalion (USA), the British Battalion (UK), the Dabrowski Battalion (Poland), the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion (Canada), and the Naftali Botwin Company (Poland and Spain, including a Jewish unit).
    [Show full text]
  • THIS IS WAR ! ROBERT CAPA at WORK THIS IS ROBERT CAPA at Work WAR RICHARD WHELAN
    THIS IS WAR ! ROBERT CAPA AT WORK THIS IS ROBERT CAPA at work WAR RICHARD WHELAN Steidl CONTENTS “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” the renowned Robert Capa said about Director’s Foreword 6 photography. These words could just as easily apply to the philosophy shared by all of us at BNP Paribas, Introduction by Christopher Phillips 8 the bank for a changing world. Capa spent most of his professional life traveling internationally, becoming intimately involved with the people and events he recorded. His work, seen in this exhibition and accompanying catalogue, shows how that approach creates exceptional results. BNP Paribas follows the same approach at all our locations in eighty-five countries around the world. THIS IS WAR ! ROBERT CAPA AT WORK We take pride in getting close to our clients. We apply the insights we gain from that intimacy to deliver banking and finance solutions capable of meeting their individual needs. by Richard Whelan On behalf of my 150,000 colleagues around the world, let me express our thanks for being part of this exhibition of Capa’s distinguished work. Let me also congratulate the International Center of Photography for its exceptional work in helping people explore the possibilities of the art of photography. 1 Robert Capa and the Rise of the Picture Press 11 Please enjoy this book and the exhibition. 2 The Falling Soldier, 1936 53 3 China, 1938 88 Sincerely, 4 This Is War! The End of the Spanish Civil War in Catalonia, 1938–39 134 Everett Schenk Chief Executive Officer 5 D-Day, June 6, 1944 206 BNP Paribas North America 6 Leipzig, 1945 252 Chronology Checklist of the Exhibition Bibliography DIRECTOR’S FOREW0RD Few photographers of the last century have had such a broad and last- recorder; he had a point of view and that, more than any blind pursuit tinguished cultural historian, Richard’s magisterial biography of Capa, Other important contributors include Christian Passeri and Sylvain ing influence as Robert Capa.
    [Show full text]
  • The Mexican Suitecase
    THE MEXICAN SUITECASE A film by Trisha Ziff Running Time: 86 Minutes Language: English, Spanish and Catalane dialogue with English and Spanish subtitles. Official website: www.TheMexicanSuitcase.com ABOUT THE FILM: THE MEXICAN SUITCASE tells the story of three lost boxes that were recovered by the film’s director, Trisha Ziff, from a closet in Mexico City in 2007. The boxes, misplaced in the chaos at the start of WWII, contained many of the Spanish Civil War negatives by the legendary photographer, Robert Capa. These boxes have become known as the Mexican Suitcase. Rumors had circulated for years of the survival of the negatives, which had disappeared from Capa's Paris studio at the start of the war. They held 126 rolls of film, not only by Capa, but also by Gerda Taro and David “Chim” Seymour, fellow photographers who were also acclaimed for their coverage Spanish Civil War. Capa, Taro and Seymour were Jewish immigrants from Hungary, Germany and Poland respectively, and they had found a home in the culturally open Paris of the early 1930s. They often traveled together in Spain. Their combined work constitutes some of the most important visual documentation of that war. It’s particularly poignant to note that Gerda Taro would die before her 27th birthday at the Battle of Brunette in Spain, killed when a Republican tank veered out of control. Her funeral bought thousands on to the streets of Paris. Exactly how the negatives reached Mexico City is not definitively known. However, given Mexico’s unique role in the war, and how it opened its doors unreservedly to the Republican exiles, it makes sense that the suitcase would find its way there.
    [Show full text]
  • ROBERT CAPA Spanish Civil War and Wwii BIOGRAPHY - Born in Budapest, 1913 As Andre Friedmann - Studied and Worked in Berlin - Moved to Paris in 1933
    ROBERT CAPA spanish civil war and wwii BIOGRAPHY - Born in Budapest, 1913 as Andre Friedmann - Studied and worked in Berlin - Moved to Paris in 1933 - met Gerda Taro Robert Capa on a destroyer during the ship arrivals in French beach for landings and liberation of France. - 1936 - 1938: Photographed the Spanish Civil War - 1939: Capa moves to New York - World War II - travels throughout Europe - D-Day Photographs - 1947: Travels to Russia with friend / writer John Steinbeck - 1947: Forms Magnum - 1954: Travels to Vietnam to cover the First Indochina war - Dies while on assignment MAGNUM - Had been thinking about the idea for many years - Met Chim in Paris who introduced him to Cartier-Bresson - During WWII met Rodger - In 1947 officially founded the agency SPANISH CIVIL WAR - War timed with technological developments - Given assignments by Vu - Exclusively shot for the Republican side - Photographs from 1936-1938 - 1936: Travels to Spain with Gerda Taro - Barcelona - Cordoba SPAIN. Barcelona. August 1936. - Madrid SPAIN. Andalucia. September 5th, 1936. Cerro Muriano, Córdoba front. Civilians fleeing. SPAIN. Santa Eulalia. 1936. Republican soldiers during an attack. - Highly controversial - First published in Vu on September 23rd, 1936 - First doubted in 1975 - 1996 soldier identified as Federico Borrell García - Question of authenticity - do specifics matter? SPAIN. Córdoba front. Early September, 1936. Death of a loyalist militiaman. Spanish Civil War Cont’d - November of 1936 Capa travels to Madrid alone - Shows fulls horror of the war - Gerda dies in Spain in 1938 SPAIN. Madrid. Winter 1936-1937. After an Italo-German air raid. D-Day Landing - June 6, 1944 Allied troops advance through Normandy - Omaha Beach - Capa is the only press photographer present GB.
    [Show full text]
  • Epsilon Theory December 22, 2013
    Epsilon Theory December 22, 2013 The Construction of Robert Capa I went to the Democratic Convention as a journalist, and returned as a cold-blooded revolutionary. – Hunter S. Thompson Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful. – Hunter S. Thompson It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions. – Voltaire There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity … You can smell it. It smells like death. – Tennessee Williams, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” Capa: He was a good friend and a great and very brave photographer. It is bad luck for everybody that the percentages caught up with him. It is especially bad for Capa. He was so much alive that it is a long hard hard long day to think of him as dead. – Ernest Hemingway, hand-written note after learning of Capa’s death, May 1954 © 2013 W. Ben Hunt. All Rights Reserved. | Epsilon Theory 1 Unless you’re an avid photography buff, you’ve probably never heard of Robert Capa.
    [Show full text]
  • How Photojournalistic Mutualism Between Robert Capa and Elmer W
    Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Faculty Publications 2016-8 What Deepest Remains: How Photojournalistic Mutualism Between Robert Capa and Elmer W. Lower Shaped Modern Concepts of World War II Steven Holiday [email protected] Dale L. Cressman Brigham Young University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Holiday, Steven and Cressman, Dale L., "What Deepest Remains: How Photojournalistic Mutualism Between Robert Capa and Elmer W. Lower Shaped Modern Concepts of World War II" (2016). Faculty Publications. 4485. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/4485 This Peer-Reviewed Article is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. “What Deepest Remains”: How Photojournalistic Mutualism between Robert Capa and Elmer W. Lower Shaped Modern Concepts of World War II Accepted Manuscript for American Journalism Vol 33 (no. 4) Fall 2016 Routledge http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2016.1241644 © 2016 American Journalism Historians Association STEVEN HOLIDAY AND DALE L. CRESSMAN Steven Holiday is a doctoral student in the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University, Box 43802, Lubbock, TX 79410, [email protected]. Dale Cressman is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Brigham Young University, 360 BRMB, Provo, UT 84602, [email protected] Abstract: As American combat photographers documented the horrors and heroism of every major front of World War II, photo editors worked behind the scenes to bring their images to publication.
    [Show full text]
  • Wartime Lens
    Nextbook.org (re-printed in The Jewish Week) Wartime Lens The woman behind Robert Capa comes into her own BY JOSCELYN JURICH Gerda Taro and Robert Capa, Paris, 1935 She was nicknamed La Pequeña Rubia (“the little blond”) by Spanish soldiers and described by Life magazine as “pretty little Gerda Taro.” Yet Taro, a photographer whose life was cut short at the age of 26 during the Spanish Civil War, was far from dainty. “Some of her pictures are pretty brutal and defied the characterization of what a female photographer ought to be interested in,” says Kristen Lubben, co-curator of the photographer’s first retrospective, “Gerda Taro,” on view at the International Center of Photography through January 8. Though she worked as a professional photographer for only two years, Taro left behind a diverse body of work documenting the front lines of the war that split Spain. Like her partner and lover Robert Capa, Taro was an Eastern European refugee from fascism, and felt a strong personal commitment to the Spanish cause. In July 1937, she was killed, struck down by a tank as she fled the battle of Brunete on the running board of a car transporting wounded soldiers, the first female photojournalist to become a casualty of war. Though her story and work have historically been overshadowed by Capa’s, Taro’s life was equally dramatic. She was born Gerta Pohorylle in 1910 in Stuttgart, Germany, to Yiddish- speaking parents from Eastern Galicia. As Taro’s biographer Irme Schaber explains in an e-mail, Stuttgart was rife with anti-Semitism, especially after World War I when many Jewish refugees from the East flooded the city.
    [Show full text]
  • Proving That Robert Capa's “Falling Soldier” Is Authentic
    PROVING THAT ROBERT CAPA’S “FALLING SOLDIER” IS AUTHENTIC by Richard Whelan Copyright © 2003 by Richard Whelan Robert Capa photographs copyright © by Cornell Capa An earlier version of this article appeared in APERTURE magazine, No. 166, Spring 2002 The evidence surrounding Robert Capa’s great photograph of a Spanish Loyalist militiaman collapsing into death, the so-called Falling Soldier, continues to refute all the allegations of fakery brought against it. In 1996 there came reason to hope that the allegations would finally stop altogether, as in that year the information was published that Spanish amateur historian Mario Brotóns Jordá had identified the man in the photograph as one Federico Borrell García, who had been killed in the battle at Cerro Muriano on September 5, 1936, the place and date of Capa’s photograph. Alas, the controversy proved to have taken on a life of its own, per- versely resistant to the preponderance of evidence in favor of the photograph’s authenticity. The latest doubts that can now be dispelled were raised in the past year by a writer named Alex Kershaw, who in his book about Capa relates that the director of the Spanish government’s civil war archives in Salamanca denies both that Borrell’s name is recorded in his archive and that Brotóns ever visited the archive. What Kershaw failed to take into account, however, is that Mario Brotóns had himself fought in the battle at Cerro Muriano on September 5, 1936, and therefore knew first-hand that Federico Borrell García was killed there that day. The allegation that Capa’s photograph was staged first surfaced in 1975, in a book entitled The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam; The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker by Phillip Knightley, a British journalist.
    [Show full text]
  • Left History 15.2 135
    Quark 15.2draft FINISHED.qxd 11/21/11 2:50 PM Page 135 Left History 15.2 135 This is a truly wonderful work that adds the type of texture that is so often missing from historical studies. Of course, it can reasonably be argued that Fair-Schulz may be making too much of a limited sample to make his case. Yet, he argues forcefully to the importance of these individuals not merely as sym- bols but as significant political and social actors. Moreover, he freely admits the limitations of this first effort when he comments that further research “will pro- duce a more rounded picture of the background, motivations, as well as patterns of thought and behavior of this intriguing group of people.” (345) All the same, this is a remarkable book using innovative methodology, solid research expressed in clear prose on a little discussed but vitally important subject. One can only eagerly look forward to this fine scholar’s future work. William A. Pelz Institute of Working Class History François Maspero, Out of the Shadows; A Life of Gerda Taro. Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan (London: Souvenir Press, 2008). In this small book, François Maspero has restored Gerda Taro and her stunning photography to view in full light. As Maspero says, he has rescued her from the cruel fate of being always someone else’s shadow; never her own. The figure that towered over Taro’s life and work is Robert Capa. Probably the finest war pho- tographer of the twentieth century, Capa was Taro’s lover, compañero and part- ner in their commitment as photojournalists to document the horrors of the expanding Nazis movement and the heroism of those who stood against it.
    [Show full text]
  • The Volunteer the Volunteer
    v ...and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN TheThe Volunteerolunteer JOURNAL OF THEV VETERANS OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE December 2007 The Bay Area post was serenaded at their annual picnic by Bruce Barthol, Nayo Ulloa, and Heather Bridger, accompanied by vets (left to right) Ted Veltfort, Hilda Roberts, Milt Wolff (in back), Dave Smith, and Nate Thornton (far right). Photo by Richard Bermack. INSIDE Puffin Education Grant, inside cover. CP Archives, page 7. National Monument dedication March 30, page 1. Journalists of the Spanish Civil War, page 9. Winner, National History Day Competition, page 2. Paul Robeson in Spain, Ch. 2, page 11. Vandalism, Dark Side of Memory, page 3. War Medicine, page 14. Spanish Civil War Exhibits, page 4. Book Reviews, page 19. Letter From the Editor The long-dreamed plan for a national memorial to the The Volunteer Abraham Lincoln Brigade is about to be realized. Many Journal of the people deserve special appreciation for the long hours they Veterans of the have put into the project, but what has also emerged is Abraham Lincoln Brigade amazing grassroots support, not only from the usual sus- an ALBA publication pects, but also from people who have not been involved in 799 Broadway, Suite 341 our activities. Contributions small and large have come New York, NY 10003 from unexpected sources. (212) 674-5398 I think that’s because this memorial looks in two direc- Editorial Board tions: to the past and to the future. It is not merely Peter N.
    [Show full text]