Photojournalism Part 2 War

What makes this photojournalism?

Robert Capa - "The Falling Man" 1936 during Spanish Civil War

                  

Robert Capa, was on the front line as a journalist/photographer. He had taken images from the Spanish Civil War, soon moving on to World War Two. Capa stated that his first two rules of photojournalism, first get close, seconded rule. Get Closer.

A photojournalist partly forgotten by time was Tony Vaccaro. An American G.I, sent out to fight in the war and take photographs of what was happening right on the front line with an gun on his arm. Many of the images he had taken of WW2 were destroyed by the American Government for censorship.

 Capa was the only journalist/photographer to be on the first wave of the D Day landings. He took four rolls of film with him and used all of them, after being sent back to America to Life magazine to be developed. They  rushed developing the negatives and most of the images taken destroyed. Only 11 negatives survived out of the four rolls. 

These two journalist that were part of the war one on the front line with a camera the other with the access to move and leave the front line. After the war these two journalist took two very different paths. Robert Capa went to Hollywood to photograph on sets and the Hollywood Stars. While Tony Vaccaro stayed in Germany to photograph the recovery and change of the country.

War photography and war photojournalism gives a snap shot in time of History. Not always revealing the full truth. There is more then meets the eye with War Photography and with all photographs with out context or words to ground them, we can have a magnitude of meanings and interpretations from one single photograph. Instead of what we are told to believe by the words that ground the photograph. But even these words can mislead what the viewer should truly see in the photograph.

During the Vietnam War Eddie Adams severed as a combat photographer in United States Marine Corps. While covering the Vietnam War for the Associated Press he took a photograph that would become his best known photograph. 

'General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon' 1st February 1968

This photograph was taken while there was a television crew as well. However the television clips of the Viet Cong was killed. However the photograph lingered in peoples minds. Was it the fact the none of the soldiers seem bothered what was happening around them. Or was it the fact the prisoner's knowing that he is about to die that stays seared on to our minds?

Adams wrote in Times: 

"The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. ... What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?"

The photograph will stay with the viewer. They will be able to reconstruct the image in their mind time and time again. The image sinks in and the viewer has longer to reflect the ideas and truths that the photograph reveals. With this style of instant snapshots, war photojournalism leaves a blazing the image on the viewers mind, sticking with them for years to come. This kind of images can change opinions on war by the shocking images that have and will continue to be taken.