Lindsay Addario He started taking war photographs when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001. Only two centuries had passed since Robert Capa chronicled the Spanish Civil War.But to go from Capa’s Spanish photo exhibition international photography center at the Addario Show at SVA Chelsea Gallery It is to traverse not only time and geography, but profound shifts in sensibility. Capa’s photographs express his belief in war as a conflict between good and evil. In our time, or in Addario’s words, an unshakable belief in justice on one side perished as victims of too many brutal, senseless and mutually corrupting wars.
Over the last 20 years, Addario has taken his camera to some of the most dangerous places on earth. A MacArthur Her Fellow, she is a freelance photographer who won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2009 for her coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan in The New York Times. Like Capa, she calls herself a photojournalist rather than an artist. She states that she is “dedicated to using her images to defy preconceived notions and show a reality that is often misunderstood or misrepresented.” She cites Capa as one of her main influences, even though many of her preconceived notions that she seeks to undermine are ones he espoused.
Capa avoided the poignant images prevalent in modern war photography. his biographer, Richard Whelan In mid-April 1945, near the end of the war, Capa’s photograph of Raymond J. Bowman, 21, an American soldier lying in Leipzig with a German sniper’s bullet through his forehead, was described as “Capa’s most gruesome photograph.” It is.” entire career. In these pictures, a young corporal lies on his back, his legs spread on a balcony where he was firing machine guns, and his head and arms twisted on the wooden floor of a knocked-back apartment. A puddle of amoeba-shaped blood oozes beneath him.
But compared to later war photographs, this image is quaint and majestic. “It was a very pure, somehow very beautiful death. I think that’s the most memorable thing about the war,” Capa said in his 1947 radio interview. We no longer look like that, for good reason.
Many Americans no longer see war as an enterprise of justice. War photography plays a role in changing our perspective.Korean photos (especially David Douglas Duncan) and in addition, the Vietnamese people (by Larry Burroughs When Don McCarrin (especially) stripped war of its charm and romance, instead focusing on blood, dirt, fatigue, injury and malice.
Addario showed us the face of today’s war with extraordinary fortitude and skill. Many of her photographs depict victims, especially women and children. A rape survivor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a wounded child soldier in South Sudan, his 7-year-old boy hit by shrapnel in Afghanistan, and soldiers fleeing Iraq on stretchers carrying Americans. . She also depicts the aftermath of natural disasters, like this stunning photo of a woman giving birth on the roadside near Tacloban, Philippines after a devastating typhoon.
There are few precious warm moments, and even those are tinged with irony. You can see the jihadists forming. Another cleverly composed image of a pregnant young woman and her mother seeking medical assistance in Badakhshan province, Afghanistan, November 2009, wearing a sky blue burqa against a perfect blue sky. I’m drawing two of her. A beautiful picture without a clear message.
Beautiful war photography can seem like a moral contradiction. Can you draw beautiful things that are ugly? The terrifying content of Addario’s painting is masterfully composed and illuminated. Some of the great war photographers of our time ( James Nachtway Another of Addario’s professed influences) was attacked for creating pictures of frightening scenes that were formally beautiful. It seems like a strange counter-argument if you believe that it is about imposing a kind of beauty on chance experiences through Adorno famously said that writing poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric. Needless to say, Capa chose not to film the liberation of the concentration camps.
It is precisely because Addario generously portrays the suffering of war that a discrepancy arises in the content and composition. For Capa, the classic format of depicting the self-sacrifice, camaraderie and other time-honored virtues of war suits his intentions. His photographs in Spain acquire a standard aura. At his show at ICP, where Robert’s brother Cornell Capa founded in 1974 and maintains his archives, the first published photobook in 1938, Death in the Exploring the making of ‘creation. As well as his personal anguish after the death of his lover Gerda Taro, who was killed in action on the front lines in July 1937, Japan in China to avoid imminent defeat of the cause he championed. embarked on a battle against photojournalist. Most of the photos in “Death in the Making” are by Capa, but some are by Taro and his friends David Seymour known as Chim. (New editions of the ICP show and accompanying book will categorize the authors of individual images.)
Capa’s most famous photograph — one of the most famous of all war photographs — depicts Republican militiamen being shot down. It was the cover image of the book. In recent years, its authenticity has been questioned, and numerous forensic analyzes of the landscape, the soldier’s identity, and even the manner in which he fell have been attempted, with inconclusive results, but it is An attempt was made to determine whether or not
This photo has been compared to a painting by Goya because of the similarity of the outstretched arms. “May 3, 1808” Spanish partisans confronting Bonapartist firing squad. But despite being painted over a century ago, this painting, complete with a pile of dismembered corpses and the expression of horror on the face of a dying man, is much more modern. The austere depiction of Capa as a hero is reminiscent of Homer.
It’s not like Republican soldiers are represented like gods. On the contrary, their tattered humanity is Capa’s biggest concern. The book and show proceed in the familiar classic sequence of The Iliad (vacation, battle, mourning), but the men and women in these photographs are emotionally open, movingly individual, and self-confident. The time of the day is highlighted.
Capa dedicated most of his published images to Republican soldiers (both male and female) who left the battlefield. He is listening to speeches, playing chess, feeding and cuddling lambs. We never forget that we are looking at certain people. The frieze-like composition emphasizes the specific characteristics of each soldier in a poignant picture of a grinning young man leaning out of a railroad car, fists raised, heading for the Aragonese lines.
Fascist-backed nationalist photographers portrayed their soldiers as faceless men or brave standouts in their regiments. One unusual photo of him in “Death in the Making” was taken by Taro and published on the back cover. A handsome and neat young soldier blows his trumpet and is positioned against the sky. He seems to have joined the fascist ranks.
How Capa’s anachronistic faith in wartime nobility feels now. Even in Ukraine, a defensive war against powerful aggressors that Addario covered, moral justification cannot mask the horror of casualties on both sides. Not clean.
Death in the Making: A Revisit of the Iconic Spanish Civil War Photobook
January 9th, International Center of Photography, 79 Essex Street, Manhattan. 212-857-000.
Masters Series: Lindsey Addario
Until December 10th, SVA Chelsea Galleries, 601 West 26th Street, Manhattan. 212-592-2145.