HW#4: Robert Capa’s Death of a Loyalist Soldier

Capa’s Death of a Loyalist Soldier has been a big controversy ever since it had been published. The photograph has been accused of being fake and staged. The analysis by Capa’s biographer, Richard Whelan, has argued that it is not fake or staged, but it is real. When reading Whelan’s argument about this photograph was convincing. As I was reading, he describes on how the two men are different and shows another photo of the men with some of their comrades. I do not think that this photograph is staged because Capa is putting his life on the line while traveling with these soldiers just to get a few shots of them during the war. I think that it is just pure coincidence for the two men to fall in the same spot. Whelan had spoken with the chief homicide detective of Memphis Police Department, Captain Robert L. Franks, about the photographs and asked if he can give Whelan a reading of the two photographs. Franks talks about how the photographs are not staged. He also states that the photograph is real because if it was to be staged the hand of the person would not be curled and when a person is falling they would have a reflex where the hand would not be curled but stretched out to have a much softer landing. I think that authenticity does matter because to capture something like this cannot be staged.