The Falling Soldier
The Falling Soldier (full title: Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936) is a black and white photograph by Robert Capa, claimed to have been taken on Saturday, September 5, 1936. It was said to depict the death of a Republican Iberian Federation of Libertarian Youth (FIJL) soldier, during the Battle of Cerro Muriano in the Spanish Civil War. The soldier in the photograph was later claimed to be the anarchist militiaman Federico Borrell García.
The photo appears to capture a Republican soldier at the very moment of his death. The soldier is shown collapsing backward after being fatally shot in the head, with his rifle slipping out of his right hand. The pictured soldier is dressed in civilian clothing, but is wearing a leather cartridge belt. Following its publication, the photograph was acclaimed as one of the greatest ever taken, but since the 1970s, there have been significant doubts about its authenticity due to its location, the identity of its subject, and the discovery of staged photographs taken at the same time and place.
History
Capa described how he took the photograph in a 1947 radio interview:
I was there in the trench with about twenty milicianos ... I just kind of put my camera above my head and even didn't look and clicked the picture, when they moved over the trench. And that was all. ... That camera which I hold above my head just caught a man at the moment when he was shot. That was probably the best picture I ever took. I never saw the picture in the frame because the camera was far above my head.
The photograph was first published in the French news magazine Vu on September 23, 1936. It was published in the United States in Life magazine on July 12, 1937.
Upon publication of the photograph, there were allegations from the Falange, an extreme nationalist political group in Spain, that the photograph was staged. However, outside of Spain, it remained unquestioned as a legitimate documentary photograph until the 1970s.
Comments
Post a Comment