Robert Capa, Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death,
Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936 AccessOne of the fundamental problems of photography not necessarily encountered by any other type of artist is the problem of
access: to photograph something, you ordinarily have to be in proximity to it, or in a position to see it, or at least at the proper standpoint—and being there is not always easy or safe. The ultimate example of the exclusivity of access is probably pictures taken on the surface of the moon, but Danny Lyons' insider photographs of a motorcycle gang in
The Bikeriders
and Larry Clark's documentation of a violent drug subculture in
Tulsa
are good examples as well—and there are others, of course. (One of my own mentors in photography, the late
Steve Szabo, once answered a student's question "What should I photograph?" by asking back, "What can you photograph?") Above every other genre of photography, however, war photography is the one which makes the most demands in return for access.

Robert Capa (left, in 1945) was born in Budapest, Hungary, and lived most of his life as a "citizen of the world." He was in a gully with a number of other Spanish militiamen when he took the picture variously known as "Falling Soldier," "Falling Loyalist Soldier," or "The Death of a Loyalist Soldier." (The true title is given above.) Remorselessly specific and yet as symbolic as a flag, surprisingly simple, undyingly powerful, it is an authentic picture of very nearly the exact instant of a man's death. Originally published in
LIFE in 1937, it is also in Capa's book about the Spanish Civil War,
Heart of Spain. It was not faked as has sometimes been claimed: forensic analysis suggests that the soldier, identified as Federico Borrell García, was already dead as he fell. (The author of
the best currently available book on Capa
, Richard Whelan, explains the research in depth in
an excellent online article about the picture.)

At only 22, Capa was the age of most graduating college seniors when he took this. He lived one of those comet-like lives—bright, and brief, as well as vivid and romantic in the best mid-century movie-star tradition. He was hard-partying, handsome, invariably described as "dashing," a womanizer, a risk-taker—an outsized personality, much loved, eventually much missed. Unlike Henri Cartier-Bresson, with whom he founded the international freelance agency Magnum Photos with their friend Chim (David Seymour), Capa cared little for careful organization or the veneer of art in his photographs. He sought immediacy and authenticity. The novelist John Steinbeck, who knew Capa well from their collaboration in Russia in 1947, said of him, "He could photograph thought...and capture worlds."

Having already photographed four wars, Capa professed to have given up war photography before he was killed, famously saying that war was like "an actress who is getting old—less and less photogenic, and more and more dangerous." He was in Japan for a Magnum exhibition in 1954 when
LIFE called needing a photographer in Indochina. Once there, Capa left the column he was with to go up the road so he could photograph the advance. He stepped on a land mine. When he was reached moments later, his leg blown off and a gaping hole in his chest, he was still alive. He died clutching his camera, one of the very first of
135 photographers
killed in the Viet Nam war. He was 39.
Posted by: MIKE JOHNSTON