[Leica] Best known photo ?

[pdzwig at summaventures.com (Peter Dzwig)]

BD,

with the utmost respect, I think that you missed my point.

B. D. Colen wrote:
> The Iwo photo was NOT faked - go do some reading. There were TWO flag
> raisings; the second, which Rosenthal shot, was the second - the idea
> was to raise a flag large enough to be seen all over the island. This
> particular "faked photo" story was laid to rest several years ago.

My recollection of the story is that the Rosenthal photo was presented to the 
world as the actual first hoisting, even though it was *actually* the second 
time that the flag had been raised.
But, be that as it may, I was asking what makes "photojournalism" - whatever 
that is [ I see a lot of stuff called photojournalism which has virtually no 
journalistic content in it]? Does something have to be "real" or can a 
re-enactment such as the Iwo Jima photo stand as journalism? The Adams photo or 
the Ut photo, which shocked a generation were of an instant and certainly 
contain "news" and could not have been re-enacted.
Note that this is NOT the same question as whether or not it was faked (eg the 
discussion about the Capa photo); it is a very different question indeed.

Perhaps I should have been less cryptic.

> 
> And the fact that there were other people shooting with 35 doesn't mean
> that Capa isn't the one who created the form, in the sense of making it
> work, and bringing it to world attention. Keep in mind that HCB always
> said that he was NOT a photojournalist. In fact, at the time Magnum was
> formed, Capa specifically advised HCB to call himself a photojournalism
> because, he told HCB, no one would buy photos from him if he described
> himself as a surrealist photographer - which was what he really was, and
> thought of himself as.

I agree if you like that Capa "created the brand", but there were people engaged 
in taking photographs to illustrate, or simply to tell, news stories, for a long 
time before he camre on the scene.

FWIW I personally don't think of HCB as a photojournalist, he is a photographer 
(largely of people) who has an unerring - and possibly unique - ability to 
capture the flavour of someone, somewhere or something. Often he encapsulates 
all three at once. Perhaps he is closer in some senses to a photoethnographer. 
Think of the photographs of pre-war Poland, of Mexico, Spain, Russia, the US, 
and of course of Paris; think also of the portraits spanning fifty years or so.

The last two photos mentioned in the first part of this response are examples of 
"moments decisifs" and "moment decisif" is a phrase that will forever be 
associated with HCB. But HCB demonstrates that the moment decisif is about more 
than news, it is about capturing some kind of spirit of the photographic subject 
and I would humbly submit that that is what we all admire in him.

To take a specific example, the boy carrying the bottle of wine in the rue 
Mouffetard, or similarly the kids in Palermo bowling a hoop. It tells us a lot 
about the child, his pride, the kids around him and Paris in '52. That is much 
more than journalism and would better, IMHO, grace the pages of National 
Geographic or a travel book about Paris.

I very much doubt that Capa was unaware of this and, as you rightly point out, 
realised that by eliding the meaning of "moment decisif" and "journalism" HCB 
could represent himself as a "photojournalist" which was something that would 
selling. Now we buy - if we can afford it - HCB's pictures for their 
photographic uniqueness without the need to rely on other labels, however 
necessary they may have been at the time.

Peter Dzwig