For my object analysis I have decided to select a photo of Robert Capa taken on Omaha beach on the 6th June 1944, afterwards know as D-day. The picture shows a United States soldier in the ocean with water up to his chest, the image is very grainy and is short in black and white. To get these photos Capa landed with the first wave of soldiers to land on Omaha beach, placing himself in great danger during the process.
What happened next has become legendary. During the development of the films a lab technician accidentally turned the temperature up to high on the dryer and melted the film, only 11 images survived (Aperture Foundation, 1996).
I wish to start by at looking at this picture purely by analysing it aesthetically. The large amount of grain is more reminiscent of a snapshot and makes it appear more real. Its strong contrast and motion blur makes it seem action packed and exciting. It also marks it out as a photograph of a real evident as opposed to being staged or shoot in a studio.
The image was shot on 35mm film, with a high ISO, and was badly focused. It is akin to the U-tube style aesthetic, with its low quality and amateurishly shot footage that has become a byword for real within contemporary society. Capa’s photos could be seen as a forerunner to this.
Its aesthetic content is clearly not adequate to explain why this image is so emotive and iconic. To discover this we will have to look at the context of these images and what their destruction means to us.
The idea of a photograph is to capture a moment in time, preserving it for all to see. As Elaine Scarry point out “Beauty brings copies of itself into being. It makes us draw it, take photographs of it” (Scarry, 2006, p3) this desire to look at beauty and create copy of it to preserve it means that its destruction is alien to us, think of the gallery ethos, conserving paintings so that we can continue to gaze at them. Capa’s photos may be macabre or horrifying but that doesn't stop them from being beautiful and certainly doesn't stop it being unique. There destruction represents a loss of beauty as well as a waste of effort and risk on Capa’s part. Coupled with the potential loss of the soldier they serve to create a poignant story of loss and regret.
The most important part of this image is clearly then its narrative denotations, the images and the stories that go with them are connected, whenever one is shown the others shown with it. They are probably almost as famous as the photos themselves, it has become iconic. The actual images are not its mind numbingly beautifulness or originality, it is their context and gives them their strength.
It is not only this image that uses narrative, it is all images. When you see the picture of a man you think who is he, where does he come from, it weather it was staged as well as a myriad of other questions. This is particularly true for photography, as people often see it as based on a real event. To explain this it is necessary to look at how it is used in other photos.
Take the “death of a loyalist soldier” also by Capa, it is of a soldier fighting in the Spanish civil war and captured the moment after he was shoot but before he had hit the ground, between life and death. Aesthetically it has many similarities to his d-day images and like his d-day images people have often talked about it’s context, in this case whether it was faked or not to the extent of the subject still being topical 72 years later. (Johnson, 2008)
Another example of this is Steve McCurry’s photo “Afghan girl”, it was not enough for him to take the photo, he had to go back and find her, as if the story was as important as the image itself. (Braun, 2003)
The same was true for the work of Diana Arbus when the makers of “the genius of photography” found the child holding the grenade. (The Genius of Photography, 2007)
None of these people revealed anything extra about the power of the images themselves from a visual perspective, the quest to find them can only be explained by a need for narrative.
As it was for McCurry and Arbus so it was for Capa, the man’s name was Houston Reilly and he lives just outside Seattle (Boyle, 2007).
If you look at the world you see repeatedly how people create their own stories and meaning from an image. This is supported by the work of the sociologist Anthony Gibbins who states are people have a need for narrative and that they use it to model their own lives on (Gauntlett, 2008). Finding the people in these photographs is a way to complete their story and bring it to some conclusion.
In Ways of Seeing John Berger said that a piece of art cannot be interpreted without its context (Berger, 1977), the truth is this context is part of the art.
Capa’s work should not be seen in terms of line and form but as a narrative he only partly intended to create. The way we interpret a piece of visual imagery is based not just its physical appearance but on the symbols of its narrative history. This history can add the depth to an artist’s work. In Capa’s depiction of d-day it is clear that it is this narrative where the images power comes from, the fact that they needed to find the individual shown clearly supports this view. By depicting a story and being part of the wider story of the Second World War this image managed to became iconic.
Bibliography
Berger, J. (1977) Ways of seeing. London: Penguin.
Scarry, E. (2006) On beauty and being just. 2nd ed. London: Princeton university press.
Gauntlett, D. (2008) Media, Gender and Identity. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.
Braun, D. (2003). How They Found National Geographic's "Afghan Girl". [online]. National geographic. Available from: http://news.nationalgeographic.co.uk/news/2002/03/0311_020312_sharbat_2.html [Accessed on 22nd November 2010, at 19.54].
The genius of photography (2007) Episode five, We are Family. London: BBC4. 23rd October 2007 [Television Series].
Aperture Foundation, (1996). Robert Capa photography. Hong Kong: Aperture Foundation
Boyle, C. (2007) G.I. in classic D-Day image to visit exhibit featuring photo. [Online] New York daily news. Available from: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/09/23/2007-09-23_gi_in_classic_dday_image_to_visit_exhibi-2.html [Accessed on 29th November 2010 at 23.14]
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