El Sant Grial de la fotografia. Així defineix Brian Wallis, director del Centre Internacional de Fotografia de Nova York, les imatges de la guerra civil espanyola perdudes per Robert Capa el 1940. EL PERIÓDICO DE CATALUNYA i The New York Times publiquen avui per primer cop algunes d’aquestes instantànies. L’escriptor Juan Villoro, col.laborador d’aquest diari, va poder veure aquest tresor abans que sortís de Mèxic i n’explica la història.
Robert Capa acceptava perdre en el joc a canvi de guanyar en l’amor. Va viure amb la intensitat d’un apostador compulsiu. El 1954, als 40 anys, va fer al Vietnam la seva última fotografia i va ser arrastrat per la metralla. El seu excepcional tracte amb la fortuna s’havia acabat. En aquella carrera marcada pel perill, salvar la pell mai va ser tan important com salvar els negatius.
El 1940, tres capses amb 127 rotllos de la guerra civil espanyola van arribar a mans del general mexicà Francisco Javier Aguilar González, que era diplomàtic a França. No se sap qui l’hi va confiar. Mèxic havia donat asil als republicans espanyols i s’oferia a rebre pròfugs de la segona guerra mundial. El general ajudava a recuperar objectes perduts en el naufragi de la història. Algú va considerar que s’havia de fer càrrec dels negatius presos a Espanya per Gerda Taro, David Seymour (Chim) i Robert Capa.
Durant gairebé 70 anys les capses van patir els avatars de l’exili. Els especialistes les van donar per perdudes. El 2001 Richard Whelan va publicar Robert Capa. The Definitive Collection. L’arxiu del fotògraf semblava tancat. Whelan va morir a finals del 2007. El seu correu electrònic tenia un missatge que no va arribar a llegir. Provenia de Mèxic i l’enviava la curadora i cineasta Trisha Ziff. S’havia produït una cosa insòlita: després de 70 anys, més de 3.000 negatius, molts d’ells de Capa, tornaven a la llum.
LA TROBALLA
Ziff va localitzar les capses a través dels descendents del general Aguilar González, un home colorit que va lluitar a la Revolució sota les ordres de Pancho Villa i que va ser diplomàtic a l’Extrem Orient i França. La seva família coneixia les seves proeses com a genet (va domar un cavall per a la filla de Hiro Hito) però ignorava que havia salvat un excepcional passatge de la fotografia. És possible que ell també ignorés l’abast d’aquells negatius i que els conservés com una muda obligació cap al passat.
A principis dels anys 90, ja mort el general, els seus familiars van vendre casa seva i hi van trobar tres capses a les quals van trigar a donar importància. Allà hi havia les fotografies de Capa, Chim i Taro.
Les obres pertanyen als hereus dels fotògrafs i s’han de conservar en condicions especials. En conseqüència, el desembre del 2007 van ser enviades al Centre Internacional de Fotografia de Nova York, fundat per Cornell Capa, el germà de Robert Capa, que encara és viu. “Els negatius desprenien aroma de nitrat però estan en molt bon estat”, afirma Ziff.
“¡És com trobar el Sant Grial!”, comenta Brian Wallis, director del centre: “Coneixíem 500 fotos de Capa de la guerra civil i ara en tenim unes 3.500. Trigarem a establir quines van ser fetes per Capa, Taro o Chim, però al final tindrem el panorama complet del que van fer en la guerra civil”, afegeix.
Els tres fotògrafs reunits a la capsa van caure en fronts de guerra (Taro, a Espanya; Chim, a Suez, i Capa, al Vietnam). “Si la foto no funciona, és que no hi ets prou a prop”, deia Capa. Cadascuna de les imatges va sobreviure de miracle i va patir els descuits amb què es tracta un material urgent (un precipitat encarregat d’un laboratori va arruïnar la seva feina més intrèpida, precisament el desembarcament a Normandia).
EL LLEGAT FOTOGRÀFIC
Per protegir la seva obra, Chim i Capa van fundar l’Agència Magnum en companyia de Cartier-Bresson. Tenien una idea clara de la conservació de negatius, però no van poder trobar els de la guerra civil.
Chim va viatjar a Mèxic en el Sinaya per cobrir el desembarcament dels refugiats espanyols i Capa hi va ser el 1940. No se sap si allà hi van buscar les fotos d’Espanya o si van parlar del tema amb l’impressor, Emerico Weisz, que vivia a Mèxic, casat amb la pintora Leonora Carrington. «La meva hipòtesi és que van pensar que això s’havia perdut
per sempre i ho van deixar de buscar», comenta Wallis. ¿Qui podia suposar que el tresor s’havia salvat gràcies al mexicà que va domar un cavall per a la filla de l’emperador japonès?.
Vaig veure les capses en companyia de Ziff, poc abans que les portés a Nova York: un rotllo dedicat a la Pasionaria, la perenne joventut de García Lorca, Barcelona en el fragor
republicà.
«Aquí es narra la història de l’exili –comenta Ziff–. Aquests negatius són refugiats; van aparèixer a Mèxic per una raó política, l’asil que es va donar als perseguits; per això és tan
important que se’n faci una exhibició aquí». Wallis coincideix: «Mèxic va jugar un paper crucial en aquesta història: va ser el lloc de refugi per a una Europa que es trencava; és molt important que les fotografies es mostrin a Mèxic i a Espanya».
André Friedmann, l’inventor de si mateix que es va fer dir Robert Capa, va portar una llegendària vida breu: va conquistar Ingrid Bergman, va saltar en paracaigudes, va viatjar a Moscou amb Steinbeck, va beure amb Hemingway, va estimar Gerda Taro i no es va refer de la seva mort prematura.
Entre els negatius hi ha poques fotos íntimes. En una, Gerda dorm amb el pijama de Capa. ¿En què somiava? La pregunta és ja incontestable. Queda l’altre somni, el de les fotos
que es van salvar i que parlen de la follia de la guerra. Tres rebels van morir per poder transmetre aquest missatge.
Les seves imatges no deixen de lluitar.
Archivado bajo: España, Memoria Histórica | Etiquetado: Fotografía, Guerra Civil, Robert Capa
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Partisans and Picture Makers in Love and War
There are a number of narratives running through “Gerda Taro” and “This Is War! Robert Capa at Work,” at the International Center of Photography( http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/international_center_of_photography/index.html?inline=nyt-org) . One concerns the rediscovery of Taro, an accomplished photographer whose brief career has been nearly forgotten. Another tracks the development of Capa, whom Picture Post magazine called “the greatest war photographer in the world.” A third is the story of two young people, Taro and Capa, who fled Nazi Germany, moved to Paris and formed a working partnership.
Taro’s story is the least known. Born Gerta Pohorylle in Stuttgart in 1910, she left Germany in 1933 after being held in custody for associating with anti-Nazi activists. In Paris she met Capa, born Endre Friedmann in Hungary but calling himself André after moving to Paris (by way of Berlin).
In spring 1936 the pair invented the persona of Robert Capa, whom they promoted as a “famous American photographer,” and she changed her name to Gerda Taro. Driven as much by political sympathy as by photographic ambition, they traveled south in August of that year to cover the Spanish Civil War for Vu magazine.
In her early days in Spain, Taro photographed militiawomen training on a beach and Republicans attending a bullfight and military show. The women here and in her work generally are posed heroically, often photographed from oblique angles or from slightly below. She was borrowing from avant-garde photographers like Rodchenko to glorify Republicans in the same way the Soviet Constructivists used such angles and unusual perspectives to exalt the worker.
When she returned to Spain, without Capa, in 1937, she documented attendees at the Second International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture on an excursion to the front. With the writers in their ties and berets watching the action from behind a barricade, these images give new meaning to “theater of war.”
Pictures of air-raid victims in the morgue and hospital in Valencia are important for two reasons: as evidence of Taro’s getting in close, living Capa’s famous dictum “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”; and as proof of the atrocities the nationalists committed against civilians.
War images, like everything in photography, are subject to manipulation. A series in Córdoba shows troops re- enacting a battle for Taro, a practice no one tried to hide. Both Taro and Capa were critically aware of how popular sentiment could be swayed by pictures.
The story of Capa’s career has been told in several International Center of Photography exhibitions, which is not surprising since his younger brother Cornell Capa founded the center in 1974. This show focuses on Capa’s development as a war photographer by looking at five stories.
His photograph “Death of a Loyalist Militiaman” — often called “The Falling Soldier” — is reproduced in a blown-up version of the layout in Vu in 1936. The image that made Capa famous is still shockingly graphic and immediate.
But it has become the subject of debate about whether it was genuine or staged. Richard Whelan, the curator who organized “This Is War!,” wrote in the catalog that “the truth concerning ‘The Falling Soldier’ is neither black nor white.” The negatives were lost long ago. Based on his consultations with a forensics expert, Mr. Whelan, who died in May, concluded that it was a photograph of a man dying. He speculated that it might have happened in a battle simulated for Capa’s camera during siesta (in true Spanish style, both sides respected the afternoon break) that attracted the nationalists’ attention and possibly led to the actual death of the soldier.
Taro, who had refused Capa’s marriage proposal, died in a battle in Spain on the very day in 1937 that she was supposed to return to Paris. She and Capa had planned to travel to China to cover the fight against the Japanese invasion, a journey that Capa hoped would result in reconciliation.
In China Capa learned to think like a photo editor, creating a story on film rolls thousands of miles from the offices where it would be published. You see him further sharpening those skills at the end of the Spanish Civil War, in 1938 and 1939.
Then came D-Day. Capa’s photographs of Americans landing on Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944, even if you’ve seen them many times before, are stunning in the way they capture the blurry confusion of battle. The log ramps for transporters jut out of the rough sea, and men scramble in an atmosphere Capa described as “very gray for good pictures.”
The circumstances surrounding the negatives are also the stuff of photojournalist legend. Most of Capa’s images from Omaha Beach were ruined in the Life darkroom in London; the film emulsion melted in a drying cabinet put on high heat to rush development. You can see evidence of the damage even in the saved images, in which sprocket holes are visible at the edges.
Together these shows follow the arc of fascism in Europe and stoke, if inadvertently, the myth of the photographer-adventurer addicted to danger. (Capa too was killed working, at 40, by a land mine in Vietnam.)
What isn’t as visible is the story of how technology changed war photography during this period. Lightweight Leica, Contax or Rolleiflex cameras taken onto the battlefield brought back remarkably specific images. Advances in printing technology — glossy coated paper stock, high-speed presses and quick-drying inks — meant that these images would be circulated to a large audience of magazine subscribers.
Taro and Capa saw themselves as partisan rather than objective observers, and truth — one of the biggest topics in contemporary conceptual photography — was at issue in their work. Mr. Whelan described how Henry R. Luce, publisher of Life magazine, ordered the director of the “March of Time” films, which Capa shot for, to use “fakery in allegiance to truth” whenever necessary.
Capa might have addressed it better in writing than in photography. On the dust jacket of his book “Slightly Out of Focus,” he wrote: “Writing the truth being obviously so difficult, I have in the interests of it allowed myself to go sometimes slightly beyond and slightly this side of it. All events and persons in this book are accidental and having something to do with the truth.”
Most photographs don’t come with such a candid disclaimer. Seekers of black-and-white truth should be forewarned.
“Gerda Taro” and “This Is War! Robert Capa at Work” continue through Jan. 6 at the International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street; (212) 857-0000, icp.org.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/arts/design/28capa.html?scp=2&sq=Robert+Capa&st=nyt