Robert Capa is one my favorite photographers and the analysis of his “Death of a Loyalist Soldier” photo was remarkable. I was also a little skeptical of the legitimacy of the photo after learning in class that historically a lot of photographers staged their photos. Staging photos is not necessarily a problem because a photo such as William Gardner’s “The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter” a gun was added and the corpse was repositioned to convey a message. If an image is entirely fabricated to represent a real event it’s deceit. The photo is great introduction to Capa’s masterful work, because there was little to no photography of this nature at the time. I’m not an historian regarding war and I didn’t want to rely on my limited visual literacy of war to dictate the validity of Capa’s photo after the question was posed to us in class. Robert Whelan did an exceptional job of tracing the background and in conducting his research. I was defiantly convinced that Whelan proved Capa’s photo to be authentic.
Robert Capa Action Figure
