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| Muerte de un miliciano. Robert Capa. Septiembre de 1936 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Death of a Loyalist Militiaman: Robert Capa on trial | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The photograph "Death of a Loyalist Militiaman" (also called the falling soldier) attributed to Robert Capa (Endre Friedmann) is an icon of photography of the Spanish Civil War. Today we know that the image corresponds to a staged session, far from the battle front. However, this image managed to highlight the Spanish war at a global scale. Is Robert Capa guilty of fraud? | ||
| By Enrique López Carrique | ||
| The Hungarian Endre Ernö Friedmann (1913-1954) and the German Gerta Pohorylle (1910-1937) met in Paris in 1934 and decided to make a living from photography. In 1935, Gerta, the brains of the team, decided to invent the figure of Robert Capa, a supposedly very famous American photographer who charged three times as much as them for each photograph. Gerta and Endre, who in France changed his name for Andrè, would act as his agents in Paris. Although the ruse would soon be discovered by the director of the French magazine Vu for which they worked, the Robert Capa brand continued because it was successful with photographs of both. Gerta would take advantage of the opportunity and change her name to Gerda Taro, easier to pronounce and remember. After Taro rejected Friedmann's marriage proposal in 1937, both photographers would distance themselves. Gerda began to sign her photographs as Taro and Friedmann definitively adopted the name Robert Capa. As the Robert Capa label was used by both photographers 1936, we will refer to each one by their already modified first names: Gerda Taro and Andrè Friedmann. | ||
| Gerda and Andrè were sent to Spain to cover the spanish civil war in 1936. Their photographs were already labelled as "Photo Robert Capa". As both showed left-wing political tendencies, the Republican government assigned a group of militiamen to protect them on their journey to the battle front. | ||
| The image became an icon | ||
| History tells us that on September 5, 1936, “Robert Capa” photographed the precise moment when a militiaman get a shot at the Cerro Muriano front (Córdoba). The "falling soldier" picture was published in issue 447 of Vu magazine on September 26 of the same year and in LIFE the following year (Figure 1), turning “Robert Capa” (supposedly Andrè Friedmann) into the best war photographer of the time and the militiaman into an icon of photography. | ||
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| Figure 1. The "Falling soldier" published in LIFE magazine on July 12, 1937 (Vol. 3, Number 2) | ||
| The context of the photograph was consolidated in 1995 when Mario Brotons Jordá, an amateur historian from Alcoy (Alicante) said he had identified the militiaman: Federico Borrell García, nicknamed Taíno. Federico's sister-in-law recognised him in the famous photograph of Cerro Muriano, where there was only one casualty that day: it must have been Federico Borrell... | ||
| ...but criticism came out | The first criticism of the militiaman's photograph emerged in 1975, when British journalist and historian Phillip Knightley published Endre Friedmann's confession, who told him in person that the image had been staged. However, that confession did not have much media coverage. | |
| The documentary “La sombra del iceberg” (2007) by Hugo Doménech and Raúl Riebenbauer, analyses different aspects of the photograph, with surprising results. A forensic analysis detects inconsistencies in the militant’s posture. LIFE magazine reported that the bullet hit the head, which must have caused a visible tear in the tissue. If the shot didn't hit the head, the cause of death could have been an impact on the heart, but there is no blood on the shirt either. The impact of the bullet in another part of the body would not have killed the militant. On the other hand, the left hand, which appears contracted in the photograph, should have appeared completely open due to muscle relaxation. Finally, the militant falls backwards during the supposed run he was carrying out. Normally he would have fallen forwards. Only a large-calibre projectile, fired from a close distance would have managed to propel the militant backwards, but it would also have dismembered him.
The same forensic scientist, Fernando Verdú Pascual (University of Valencia), came to the conclusion that the militiaman in the famous photograph is not Federico Borrell García (Taino), of whom there are also several photographs. Federico was a 24-year-old with diastasis in the incisors (Tooth spacing), a more closed lip commissure, an earlobe separated from the face and less muscular fingers than the militiaman, which corresponds to an older person. In short, this documentary demostrate that the photograph was posed and that the militiaman is not Taino. The supply of new data increased. In 2008, the researcher Miguel Pascual found an obituary in the anarchist newspaper Ruta Confederal, published in 1937, in homage to Taíno. Written by his companion E. Borrell Fenollar, it describes how on September 5, 1936, Taíno was hiding behind the trunk of a tree when he was shot directly to the heart. This description does not match the surroundings of the militiaman in Capa's photograph, supporting the conclusions of the documentary “La sombra del iceberg”. |
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| Figure 2. Robert Capa, no title, militianmens, 1936. Richard Whelan, This is war! Robert Capa at work, Nueva York, Steidl International Center of Photography, 2007. | ||
| The same year, two new characters come into play: Fernando Penco Valenzuela, an archaeologist from Cordoba, and José Manuel Susperregui Etxebeste, a journalist, photographer and professor at the Department of Audiovisual Communication and Advertising at the University of País Vasco. Both look at the pictures presented at the exhibition “This Is War! Robert Capa at Work”, which opened in September 2007 at the International Center of Photography in New York. The images also appear in the huge catalogue of the exhibition, with more than 400 pages. Although the militiaman picture does not allow us to observe the distant surroundings, the new photographs provided by this publication (Figure 2), previously unknown, offer a clear skyline of the surronding. This new information allows to locate where photo shoot took place, including the death of the militiaman.
Both characters travel separately to Cerro Muriano to compare the horizon of the new photographs with the Cerro Muriano landcapes, reaching the same conclusion: the photograph “the falling soldier” was not taken at Cerro Muriano. This finding completely dismantles the story offered by Endre Friedmann and his biographer, as well as the theory of Federico Borrell “Taíno”. By means of two differents ways, the researchers concluded that photo shoot was taken in Espejo village (Córdoba). Now they had to find the exact place. It is known that Taro and Friedmann were in Cerro Muriano on September 5, so the photograph of the militiaman must have been taken at least one day before. If the photo shoot took place on September 4 in Espejo, the militiaman could not have died there because the battle in Espejo did not start until September 22 of that year. Witnesses of that battle and historical records assure that not a single shot was fired until then. The data is already overwhelming: the photograph had been taken without any fear of a shootout. From this starting point, a frantic race begins between the two reserachers to be the first to locate the exact place where the photographs were taken. |
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| Figure 3. Location of the current lookout dedicated to the dead militiaman and proposal to locate the exact place, according to the authors who have worked on this topic. The proposed locations are based on the coordinates provided by F. Penco (Haza del reloj) and J.M. Susperregui (Cerro del Cuco). PNOA orthoimage. Junta de Andalucía. | ||
| Susperregui and Fernando Penco are still fighting a battle to defend their proposals for the location of the falling soldier photograph (see bibliography). In any case, in 2014 the 1st Conference dedicated to Robert Capa and the photo of the militiaman was held in Espejo with Fernando Penco as the discoverer of the place (to the anger of the competitor). A space was set up as a viewing point, equipped with benches and signs showing the work carried out by F. Penco to determine the location of the photograph, although it is indicated that the exact location would be a few metres below the lookout. | ||
| The Director General of Historical Memory of Andalusia has expressed his intention to declare Haza del Reloj as a "Site of Historical Memory". | ||
| Despite Susperregui's criticism, the militiaman's point lookout was improved by Diputación Provincial of Córdoba in 2021. Surely the ease access, the availability of the land and the views offered by the place are good reasons for its current location, even though it does not coincide with the exact location proposed by the researchers. Fuensanta Alcalá and I visited Espejo and its famous point lookout at the beginning of December 2024. The place is pleasant, offering fantastic views, both of Espejo as the plain that serves as the background for some of the famous photographs by Friedmann and Taro. It is evident that the place matches very well with the background seen in the photographs of the militiamen, as is the case with the Cuco hill, which is very close (around 600 meters away). Both locations could even have been used for that famous photo shoot. It is always better to know the exact data than the approximations. However, a difference of a few hundred metres should not be a problem for remembering that day of the photo shoot. It is about remembering a historical event, even if it was planned. Perhaps this place could also become a tribute to war reporters who die at work and to civilians who are killed without having caused these conflicts. | ||
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| Sculpture of the militiaman by José María Serrano Carriel. The article published in LIFE magazine is also shown. The urban centre of Espejo at the background. Image: E. López-Carrique. | ||
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| Part of the signage installed at the militiamen's point lookout. Espejo and its castle in the background. Image by E. López-Carrique. | ||
| ¿Does the end justify the means? | ||
| The famous Capa picture has received applause, mixed opinions and fierce criticism. José Manuel Susperregi wrote "if this fraud had been discovered today, Friedmann (or perhapsTaro) would have been fired from Magnum". However, not everyone shares this opinion. Josep Vicent Monzó, photography curator at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM) commented at the time that the important thing about photography is not how it is take, but why and for what purpose it is done. For this photographer, Capa's image fulfilled its mission: to denounce the conflict caused by fascism in Spain. Some other journalist consulted believes that "the limit is the intentionality." A montage that does not distort reality (during the civil war many militiamen would die in a similar way to that shown by Robert Capa) is not the same as an image manipulated to inform the opposite of what is happening. Our current hoaxes are an example of distortion of reality.
We asked the opinion of Antonia Sánchez Villanueva, journalist, former deputy director of the newspaper "La Voz de Almería", professor and communications advisor at the University of Almería. The answer was not long in coming: the ethics code of journalists prohibits falsifying news or an image. Equally, the Style Manual of the newspaper El País: (SECTION 5, section 1.32) proclaims: "Any manipulation of photographs that is not strictly technical is prohibited (journalistic editing, elimination of development or transmission defects). An image may not even be inverted so that the face of the person photographed directs their gaze to the information it accompanies." We have consulted other style manuals and they all contain rules in the same way. The conclusion seems to be clear: the photograph should not have been taken. The end does not justify the means, even if reality is not distorted. |
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| Robert Capa on trial(Daring but perhaps necessary) | ||
| Susperregui's statement: "If the photograph had been taken 'today', Robert Capa would have been expelled from Magnum" seems reasonable at first glance. However, a judge would also have told us that in order to judge someone we must go back to the time of the events, according to the principle of legal certainty that protects the certainty of rights and obligations. As a general rule, laws are not retroactive and only regulate events that occurred after they were sanctioned. We cannot judge an old event from today's perspective, 88 years after the event. Should we prohibit the viewing of old films because today they seem racist, xenophobic or a source of bad habits such as smoking or drugs consumption on camera? They were not prohibited at the time because such regulations did not exist.
Since Capa worked for a French magazine at the time, we will focus mainly on the regulations of that country. The French press of 1880, "like all presses", had a clear goal: to sell newspapers and magazines. And they did so by satisfying the plasure and curiosity of their readers at all costs (Rodríguez, 2006). In fact, the journalism treatises of the time were not concerned with the morality and depth of the text (de Arnoux, 2019). In 1918, the Association of the Professional Press of France was created and its first ethical code (Charte d’éthique professionnelle des journalistes) was published. The code already imposed the veracity of information as the basis of the written press. However, that first code was not adopted by the editorials of the time because it was not a legal rule of mandatory compliance (Pigeat, 2003). The management of newspapers and magazines had to continue selling copies. The code was revised in 1938 but was still not used. The Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Journalists, known as the “Munich Declaration” of 1971, was signed by the press associations of six countries of the former ECC (including France) and since that date, news companies like EFE published their own style manuals (1975). Most press publications wrote their manuals in the 1980s and 1990s. In conclusion, the "falling soldier" picture was taken at a time when there was not a mandatory ethics code. Veracity was not defended by the public administration and disruption of images and news was a commonly work among journalists and photographers. Consequently, I believe that we cannot accuse Robert Capa to do what the majority did and continue are doing, although now there are mandatory ethic rules. CASE DISMISSED. |
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| Robert Capa durante el desembarco de Normandía (1944). Magnum Photos. | ||
| Let's think for a moment: Friedmann and Taro are two young people in their twenties who came into a civil war. They have to send a report from the battle front. At first they don't get the images they need. It is said that the commanding officer suggested to take pictures of militiamen representing a supposed war action, something like a film script. In any case, Images were sent to Vu and boom! Of course they publish them!, even though they had known from the beginning that pictures were fake. Such a photo would sell many magazines. LIFE didn't raise any problems as far as we know, when the "normal reaction", watching the "falling soldier", would have been to interrogate the author to be sure of the image veracity. That issue of LIFE went on sale and nobody then raised the possibility of fraud.
After Gerda Taro's death, Friedmann became Robert Capa. The photographer never boasted about his photo. Who knows if he didn't even agree with its publication. No further fake images or stages was ever heard of in the following years of his carear. However, the photographer's worth was proven. Capa photoraphed several wars, parachuted, was present on D-Day and died when he stepped on a mine. He took action photos with a camera that would be impossible for us to manage to get the same images. We cannot judge Robert Capa by a single picture, but by his entire career. We must take into account the era in which he lived and worked as a photographer. Let think about for a minute. Probably we all have a falling soldier in our image archive. As very famous person said: "Let he who is without guilt cast the first stone..." |
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