[Leica] Best known photo ?

[mlpowell at sbcglobal.net (Matthew Powell)]

On May 12, 2004, at 3:01 PM, B. D. Colen wrote:
> NOT TRUE.
>
> IF it was faked - and based on the present evidence, I believe it was
> real - but IF it was fake, then he indeed disguised it as something - 
> he
> disguised it as a photograph of a soldier who had just been shot, dying
> in combat. Period.
>
> Capa was on assignment, to shoot the war in Spain. And that is what he
> shot. He was not just taking "pictures" - he was a journalist with a
> camera. And thus to submit a faked photo is to submit a lie.
>
> What is so complicated about that?

As a piece of journalism - something to run in the paper, to inform 
people about a specific event or situation - maybe it would be a 
failure. But today, or even then - it wasn't a photograph about a 
specific man dying. It wasn't evidence.

I think there's a problem in equating this, as someone has noted, with 
journalism that's meant to act as evidence - faked abuse photos or the 
photoshopped Kerry-Fonda photos. If Capa's photo was supposed to 
illustrate something specific about which it lied, then I'd agree with 
you.

But as I see it, the photo does nothing of the sort.

MP