Eyes of the World Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, and the Invention of Modern Photojournalism

by Desconhecido

  These are especially heady times for Capa. In April his good friend Chim, another, more established photographer, went off to Spain to cover the new Popular Front government that was just barely elected in Feb-ruary. (No one can pronounce David Szymin’s name, so he goes by Chim.) Before leaving, Chim told his editors to hire Capa to cover the similar Popular Front movement in France. So Capa is busier than ever with more assignments, enthusiastically snapping pictures. Maria Eisner has also hired him on a regular basis with a small stipend. Week after week as the election nears, Capa is at the demonstrations, capturing the mood and starting to show real flair and swagger as a photographer.

  This page from a Belgian socialist publication shows the “new hope” of the Popular Front. Chim took the image of the hopeful crowd at a land reform rally in Spain. See another photo he took then, and how it was used, on pages 104–105.

  Two men ride on a Popular Front float in a May Day parade in Paris in 1936 or 1937. Capa may have taken the shot because the word Bresson in the store sign reminded him of his friend and fellow photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

  Sometimes Capa teeters from a rooftop to capture a sea of heads, protesters bearing antifascist banners or signs exhorting people to fight anti-Semitism. Or he plunges into crowds, homing in on an individual: a little boy in a one-piece woolen suit raising his fist in the Popular Front salute, imitating the adults around him. Or elegant old men in a car, deep in conversation, or people at a rally, heads craned upward, listening intently to speeches. His images show how on edge, how riveted, everyone is. Though the Popular Front is gaining ground, there are battles with the extreme right, which is emboldened by the regimes of Germany and Italy. No one can tell, exactly, where the current of events will take them.

  Today at the Café du Dome, Chim has recently returned from Spain. There the Popular Front’s hold on power appears to be fragile. Spasms of violence broke out when some on the left went on destructive rampages. And there have been rumblings from the military and factions on the right who do not accept the Left’s vision for Spain. They see communism as a foreign disease, an infection from the Soviet Union that must be purged so that order, Christianity, and monarchy will be restored.

  Chim wears his trademark three-piece suit, peering at the passersby through wire-rimmed spectacles while he carefully sips his coffee. Originally from Poland, Chim could not be more opposite from Capa. While Capa is a scruffy, charming boy, loudly joking with everyone at the table, Chim is more like a reserved, old-fashioned professor. “Chim thought about everything very deeply. He had a personality a bit like that of a rabbi. And the mind of a mathematician or chess player,” explains their friend and fellow photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. “He felt the weight of Jewish tradition on his shoulders.” Despite these differences, a deep affection and respect courses between the two men, and they influence each other as photographers.

  Taken at the Place de la République on May 1, 1936 or 1937. This is a close-up of the enthusiastic crowds at protests—even taking over the base of a statue.

  When the friends emerge into the Place de la République, Capa leaves the others on the sidewalk and rushes into the street. The crowds are huge, converging on the central square from all directions like the seething spokes of a wheel.

  Capa doesn’t wait; he clambers up lamp poles to shoot the surging crowd. He swings his camera upward, revealing young men watching be-musedly from the top of a shop awning. A swarm of supporters stand at the base of a statue in the center of the square. Children sit atop their fathers’ shoulders. Young, old, mothers, grandparents—a human river flows down the broad boulevards.

  Young and old, perhaps father and son, at a Popular Front rally in Paris, October 1936.

  There is Capa, moving swiftly, “crouching,” a fellow photographer notices, “and watching like a cat . . . waiting for his chance to spring his picture, sidling up, insinuating himself, not attracting attention to himself, head bent over camera, completely absorbed in his job.”

  Many news photographers take pictures of the crowds walking down streets with their arms raised in the characteristic salute of the Popular Front, but Capa’s more personal shots let us into the truth of these events. Out of the numbing parade of arms and legs, the blur of faces, he is able to seize on the particular, the human, the one shot that tells the whole story: a child, atop the father’s shoulders, waving a French flag.

  Capa is already developing his trademark eye. This is what will distinguish his work and that of his circle in the years to come. As big movements and big ideas sweep the streets, the entire continent of Europe, he homes in on what it means to be human during such momentous times.

  He is beginning to tell a story. A story in pictures.

  Capa looks for ways to make a massive march in Paris, 1936, a very human expression of hope, as in this image of what must be a father and his young child.

  THE WORLD IN BLACK AND WHITE

  Why is photography so tempting for Capa and his friends?

  In the nineteenth century, when the camera came into use, it was a clumsy box that needed to sit on top of a stand or tripod. The photographer would slide a large glass plate into the back of the camera. Subjects had to stay frozen, often for more than a few seconds, while the photographer dipped his head under a curtain. Then he squeezed the shutter button while a lightbulb he held with his other hand popped, stunning the eyes with its blinding flash. That’s why early photographs look like static paintings. Action shots were nearly impossible. Over time, the old camera boxes became smaller and a little more portable. Eastman Kodak’s Brownie camera, introduced in 1900, was made of cardboard and was so small and simple a child could use it. There was also the Rolleiflex, a long box with a viewfinder on the top that you stared into to see the image floating inside.

  For all cameras, after the images were captured, the film was laboriously developed: dipped in chemicals to create negatives, which were then put in an enlarger. The resulting image was exposed to special light-sensitive paper. Slowly, slowly, the submerged sheets were soaked in tubs of chemicals, tapped with tongs, until the prints emerged like ghostly traces.

  In the 1920s and 1930s, a German firm revolutionized photography by creating the portable Leica. The Contax camera, developed by a competitor, followed shortly after. These cameras were small and rested snugly in your palm. They used thirty-five-millimeter film—the same size used in movies—which was inserted on a left spool with sprockets and threaded across to the right spool. With each click, the shutter opened and the image was exposed on a rectangle of film. The photographer then advanced to the next frame. The mechanisms inside were fast: you could click away and capture action in less than a second. It was like taking a movie of many stills, getting every beat, every moment in an event.

  The Leica IIIb was introduced in 1938 but was very similar to the camera Capa would have used.

  Now Capa, Taro, and others can move around, lift the camera to the eye, focus, and shoot, again and again. These new cameras are like everything that is happening in the twentieth century: sleek, modern, lightweight.

  To Capa’s camera, some strikes—such as this one, photographed in 1936 or 1937— were more joyous fun than grim protest.

  And they are perfect for yet another new invention: the photographic news magazine. Just as politics and events are turning more turbulent and as modern life speeds up, these illustrated magazines are being consumed by millions of readers across Europe. They are part of a new, kinetic, and connected world, where news feels nearly instant. The publications cover not just big events but everyday happenings, fashions, trends. People are seeing their own lives mirrored back to them through images. Readers everywhere hunger for photographs of the here and now.

  For Capa, who craves action and adventure, the lightweight camera and the photography-filled magazines are a perfect fit. The camera becomes an extension of his body, his eye; it becomes a way of taking in the fast-moving events. If you can pick up a camera, aim, and sho
ot, you are part of the current of the now.

  That is why so many of these young people have taken up the medium. Capa’s good friend Henri Cartier-Bresson is the only one in his and Gerda’s social circle who is not a refugee or an immigrant; he comes from a wealthy French family. Originally he studied painting and literature, until he, too, caught the photography bug, capturing fleeting moments that are somehow the essence of Parisian life. Tall and bookish, an intellectual who reads the communist newspaper every morning, Cartier-Bresson makes an unlikely friend for Capa. But the two relish each other’s company and can often be found at a café discussing politics or swapping tips about assignments. It is Capa who urges his friend to leave the rarefied world of art: “Call yourself a photojournalist,” he tells him, “and then do whatever you like.”

  Strikes took place around France, and Capa recorded workers sitting on the rooftop of the Galeries Lafayette department store in June 1936, and in the same year, sleeping on a factory floor and receiving packages of food.

  For immigrants, photography is a way to gain a foothold in their new surroundings. Says fellow Hungarian Ata Kandó: “It was a job immigrants could take on without having to speak the language well.”

  All of these friends and refugees—Chim, Gerda’s good friends Fred and Liselotte Stein, and others gathering at the Café du Dome or marching in the Place de la République—have had their young adulthood fractured, broken, as they were flung headlong into the next city, the next temporary home. There is no going back now. The old is no longer possible. They cannot rely on the past. They live purely in the moment.

  IN THE DAYS LEADING UP TO THE MAY 3 VOTE, Capa is busy. He photographs men and women peering intently at the posters and propaganda plastered on walls. On the day of the election, he shoots a picture of a man with a weathered face, clutching his cap as he drops his vote in the wooden box.

  The Popular Front wins by a small margin. Now workers want their demands met at once. In late May, in a suburb of Paris, a huge strike is called at the Renault car factory. Capa and Chim hurry over, only to learn that the workers have barricaded themselves inside the building. Somehow, Capa charms his way inside to photograph the men sleeping on the concrete floor by the stilled machinery. Hundreds of thousands of workers throughout France have gone on strike. When workers at the elegant Galeries Lafayette go on strike, Capa climbs to the rooftop, photographing the saleswomen and men there. The young man with the newly minted name manages to be everywhere; he is all blurred action.

  A couple carefully scans the newspaper headlines as the May 3, 1936, election approaches.

  Capa now lands even more assignments. At the end of June, he travels to Geneva to cover a special session of the League of Nations, where Haile Selassie, the emperor of Ethiopia, is pleading with other nations to intervene on behalf of his country, which has been invaded by the Italians. While there, Capa happens upon a Spaniard who is forcibly dragged away by the police. Capa’s photos soon become a sensation, as they symbolize the muzzling of voices in an increasingly intolerant Europe.

  There is one editor, however, who is not fooled by the story of Robert Capa: Lucien Vogel, who runs an influential Left magazine called Vu. He is a prominent man and married to the editor of Vogue magazine. Known for his elegant British tweed jackets and silk neck scarves, the dapper Vogel telephones Gerda, saying, “Tell that ridiculous boy Friedmann, who goes around shooting pictures in a dirty leather jacket, to come see me.”

  On May 3, a Frenchman casts his ballot in the crucial election.

  When Capa arrives at Vogel’s fancy estate, the two men take a walk on the big lawn—a test to see whether the regal editor will approve of the young man. By the time they return to the house, Vogel has agreed to publish some of Capa’s photos from the League of Nations session in Geneva.

  Capa and Taro have won a kind of seal of approval.

  In July, Capa photographs the exultant crowds at Bastille Day, which celebrates the French Revolution. This year the holiday is especially festive, given the recent electoral success of the Popular Front. But a few days later, there is troubling news. The Spanish military has staged an uprising. Spain’s fragile leftist government is in trouble.

  JULY 1936, MOROCCO AND SPAIN

  Short, pale, and with a round belly, General Francisco Franco does not seem like the most dynamic leader to spearhead a military coup. But for four years he has brought victories to Spain, fighting to keep control of Spanish Morocco. He is ambitious, cold, pragmatic, and even manages to win the respect of the Moroccans he defeated. Ever since the new Popular Front government was elected in Spain, the military has been plotting to overthrow it.

  “Everyone in his senses knew,” wrote a government army officer, “that Spain, far from being a happy and blissful country, was living on a volcano.”

  On July 17, 1936, military troops storm government offices and seize control of Spanish Morocco. By the next day, the Canary Islands, which sit off the Atlantic coast of northwestern Africa, are taken. General Franco immediately flies to the city of Tetuán in Spanish Morocco, where he is met by a crowd of enthusiastic rebel officers.

  Bedecked in his uniform with tasseled epaulets and a sash across the chest, Franco declares, “At stake is the need to restore the empire of ORDER within the REPUBLIC . . . and the principle of AUTHORITY.”

  Civil war erupts. In Barcelona, fighting immediately breaks out on the streets as groups defending the Popular Front government grab weapons and try to repel the military rebels.

  That night, Dolores Ibárruri, a fiery orator and a Communist Party leader, gets on the radio and gives an impassioned speech. “Workers! Farmers! Antifascists! Spanish patriots! Confronted with the fascist military uprising, all must rise to their feet, to defend the Republic, to defend the people’s freedoms as well as their achievements toward democracy!” La Pasionaria (the passion flower), as Ibárruri is known, then sounds the battle cry for the loyalists who defend the Republic: “Long live the Popular Front! Long live the union of all antifascists! Long live the Republic of the people! The fascists shall not pass! THEY SHALL NOT PASS!”

  By July 19, the summer music that usually blares from loudspeakers in Barcelona has changed to speeches and exhortations to rise up and fight Franco’s rebels. Workers stream onto La Rambla, the main walkway in Barcelona, to join rapidly forming militias that will fight Franco’s men. The worst of the fighting takes place at the Atarazanas barracks, the main military stronghold, near the port. After three days, the military rebels are driven back. For those on the left, for the workers and peasants especially, Franco’s military uprising is a call to arms. This isn’t just a civil war—it’s a chance to completely make over Spain.

  This poster shows values the rebels associated with their cause and with Franco, who became their leader: honor, heroism, faith, authority, justice, efficiency, intelligence, will, and austerity.

  Revolution springs up everywhere. In Barcelona, the tram lines and telephone systems are quickly taken over by political parties. In villages and towns, new committees are created, with a complete reorganization of who is in charge. In the region of Aragon, farms are swiftly turned into collectives. In some parts of Catalonia, even money is eliminated. In Madrid, restaurants serve free meals of rice and potatoes, boiled with meat.

  Hitler planned the 1936 Olympics in Berlin to be a display of German might and Aryan superiority. In response, antifascists on the left created a People’s Olympics to be held in Barcelona. The American team was selected to be racially integrated and to feature working-class athletes. The rebellion against the Republic broke out on July 19, just as the games were to start, and they were soon canceled.

  For everyone watching Spain from afar, the Republic’s battle against Franco is a line in the sand. It’s the chance to resist fascism and stop the greater war they fear is looming on the not-so-distant horizon.

  “When the fighting broke out on 18 July,” an English writer noted, “it is probable that every antifascist in E
urope felt a thrill of hope. For here at last, apparently, was democracy standing up to fascism. For years past the so-called democratic countries had been surrendering to fascism at every step. . . . But when Franco tried to overthrow a mildly left-wing government, the Spanish people, against all expectation, had risen against him. It seemed—possibly it was—the turning of the tide.”

  As Chim would write a friend, “Dear boy, the world is not doing well, but it will be better and soon. It nears, we can feel it, we can see it, and it hangs in the air.”

  PARIS

  For Taro and Capa, the news from Spain is a chance, an opportunity. They decide they must immediately go to Spain—together, as a team—and capture these vital events.

  Before they leave, they visit a friend who feeds them breakfast and notices that “they were deeply in love, and she was so happy to go there with him. They were as broke as ever, and I did what I could and made them a meal.”

  The trip to Spain is a big change in their relationship, an open declaration of their partnership. It is a major step for Taro, who is not just on the sidelines, aiding and helping Capa. She now has a press pass and is declaring herself to be a photographer in her own right. Yet Spain is a gamble. They are still new at this—who knows what work they’ll be able to sell?