Falling Soldier, The (Death in Spain). Robert Capa's image of a Spanish Republican militiaman supposedly at the moment of death in action first appeared in the French magazine Vu on 23 September 1936, then in Life on 12 July 1937, establishing its author as a star photojournalist. Typically, however, Capa later gave vague and conflicting accounts of its creation, and in a 1975 book, The First Casualty, Phillip Knightley suggested that it might have been staged. Controversy has raged ever since. In 2002 Richard Whelan forcefully defended the picture's authenticity. Drawing partly on the research of a Spanish amateur historian, Mario Brotons (d. 1997), he identified the figure as Federico Borrell Garcia from Alcoy near Alicante; the location as Cerro Muriano on the Córdoba front; and the date as 5 September 1936. According to Whelan, Capa's photograph followed a series of images of soldiers exercising to the rear of the firing line, and caught Borrell being suddenly shot when Francoist troops worked their way behind their position in the late afternoon. His posture, with no attempt to break his fall, indicates instant death. However, Alex Kershaw challenged Brotons's research. And the identity and fate of a second soldier, photographed falling at apparently the same spot, remain, as before, mysterious.
— Robin Lenman
Bibliography
- Whelan, R., ‘Robert Capa's Falling Soldier: A Detective Story’,
Aperture , 166 (2002). - Kershaw, A., Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa (2002)
