Monday 30 September 2013

Photojournalism part2(war photography)



Robert Capa/Tony Viccaro(war photojournalists)

  • Describe the different circumstances that these photographers experienced as Photojournalists in WW2 
  • Find and upload to your blog some work of theirs 

 Robert Capa was a photojournalist who worked with Life magazine who was good at capturing deceive moments during the WW2 where he was sent to capture moments that were taking place during the war. His motto when taking this photographs was "get close, then get closer" and I guess that's what made him stand out in terms of war photography as he captured moments that no other photographer would ever imagine capturing as these photos were taken where the photographer's life was at risk. In order to capture these moments he used a Leica camera which during that time was a major development in terms of media technology since before the invention of such a device, many photographers used slower and heavier camera which would not be of any help to Robert due to what he was capturing. His sense of war was quite different from most people's views if you asked me. He found war romantic and glamorous I think mainly because he was just in and out of the war mainly to just capture its moments but not really be in it and this is also clearly shown in  most of his photographs that he took during WW2. The photographs to me seem to be showing the slight aftermath of the war if I should say or even better, not the core of the war but more or less the aggressive side of the war if you know what I mean although the photos clearly show the war.
                                                                                           

The photograph on the left is one of many which he took during the war and as you can tell it leaves that rather  griping feeling but are not really shocking enough to leave a maybe  negative impression to someone who is not affected by this or maybe it it just me.















Tony Viccaro on the other hand was a soldier that was taking part in the war so his view on the war was way different from Robert's. He used to take photographs while taking part in the war before becoming a photojournalist. Before his work became famous he used to use a camera known as a speed graphic whch was not really helpful now that you look at it.

When you look at this camera, it looks really big and it was not flexible being that he had to carry it with his riffle and also he had to add film into the camera and could only capture two photos before adding new film and that took a while to do so he ended up missing out on the moments that he would have captured so he decided to get an argus (just below the seed graphic) which again was a development in media technology as this camera was faster and easier to use since it was smaller and would take many photographs without changing the film every after a shot. Tony as a soldier in the world
war looked at war as a horrible and sad time and his photographs proved why. Unlike Robert's photographs, his were if I should say showed the real effect or the real sense of the war. His photos showed rather depressing and distressing situations as they were usually of dead soldier or people in despair which I think to me properly showed war in a soldiers eyes rather than a person who worked for a magazine. Most of Tony's photographs were banned because the government felt that the public was not ready to see his pictures as they showed people and soldiers of their own country dying and I guess if I were living in that era and shown the pictures below, I myself would feel as the government thought its public would feel.















In overall I have to say both photographers captured this war as they saw it. Robert Capa saw it as romantic and glamorous so he captured it that way and I guess that is why he took such pictures and als as well as beause he worked for a magazine that the public viewed so I guess he also had to be quite non-explicit about soe of his work whereas Tony Vaccaro captured it as a rather bad and agrressive time and as one can tell his photographs spoke otherwise.


No comments:

Post a Comment