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Title: Blood And Champagne: The Life And Times Of Robert Capa
ISBN: 0306813564
Author:
Alex Kershaw
Publicate Date: 2004-05-25
Publish: 2004-05-25
List Price: $18.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $6.50
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $2.99
Amazon Merchant Price: $17.10
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1: Pulp semi-fiction
I'd call this "the Danielle Steele biography of Robert Capa." Capa ranks as one of the great war photographers, but I'm not sure that warrants the romantic, People Magazine treatment of some of Capa's less laudable personal traits. Gambling with other peoples' money, bragging about sexual conquests, bringing prostitutes home to the friend's house where he's living for free, embezzling money from Magnum, and in general, refusing to behave as a grown-up make for good reading. But why the need to trollup these common male bad habits into something positive? He also lied about his communist leanings so as to get himself and his relatives into the USA. As any good commie knows, back then you could live a lot better in the USA than in Joe Stalin's socialist paradise. I guess that's why writer Kershaw, himself a bit of a commie, moved from Britain to the US. To make more money. The book is the result of some very meticulous and time-consuming interviews. But if a writer is going to say dumb things like describing Life Magazine as "more than ever a cheerleader for American aggression in the Far East," then why not just make everything up? Why bother to talk to anybody? Kershaw consistently sticks to the commie view of America, despite the fact that by the time he wrote the Capa book communism had been rejected by everybody except phony intellectuals and former KGB operatives in places like Berkeley, California and Cambridge, Massacusetts. "Watching an imperial power kill peasants" is how Kershaw describes the journalistic opportunity of the Korean war, apparently forgetting that the US participated in a UN action against the Chinese communists. So why didn't Capa report to the Chinese and shoot pictures from their side? Afraid he'd loose his "imperialist" passport?
Lastly, the book contains none of the photographs which are the real reason why Capa is worthy of a book. Kershaw says Magnum refused because it was not an "authorized biography." Seems to me anybody who wants to pay for the use of the photos will get Magnum's cooperation. Either Kershaw ran afoul of somebody who said "no," like maybe Cornell Capa, or else he didn't want to pay the fairly modest fee for publication rights. And one more thing. If English Kershaw is going to live and write in America, maybe he should spend ten bucks on a dictionary which explains American spelling.
I give this pulp semi-fiction a firm thumbs down.
James Mason
Alaska, USA
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2: A real life tear jerker. Reads like a novel. I loved it!
I loved this book. It actually made me cry. I had no idea that Robert Capa had an affair with Ingrid Bergman (among others!) and it is brilliantly told. I have read a few of Alex Kershaw's books and the thing I really love about them is that they tell true stories in an exciting way. They really do read like novels -- rather than the usual stuffy, worthy bios that get written that only an obsessive fan of the subject could be bothered to wade through. Deserves to be made into a movie.
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3: The 20th Century's greatest photojournalist
The life of Robert Capa is fascinating. Born in Budapest in 1913, he was to die forty years later in Vietnam after establishing himself as one of the great photojournalists of the 20th Century. He captured on film some of the most memorable pictures in the Spanish Civil War, including the iconic "The Falling Soldier." A shameless propagandist for the Republican cause, he thought nothing of having combatants "pose" for some of his most dramatic pictures - including, many think, "The Falling Soldier." Did the republican soldier fall because he was shot or because he tripped? Was it posed? The jury is still out on that one. A Jew at a time when anti-Semitism was rife in Europe, he became a committed anti-fascist and socialist. He established the photographers' co-operative, Magnum, in order that photographers had control over their own photographs and earnings. This was not so different to the kibbutzim established in Israel by highly idealistic settlers whom he so admired. Needless to say, Capa was there to record the birth of the fledgling state of Israel in 1948 and caught on film that nation's birth pains as it battled with its Arab neighbours. War was his medium, even though he hated it. He went over in a landing craft to photograph the D-Day landings and produced some of the most memorable pictures of battle ever taken. This was despite that most of the pictures were ruined during the rushed processing in London and some of those that survived are out of focus. Capa was talented, generous, humorous, and charismatic. An inveterate gambler, he played poker with the likes of John Huston and Ernest Hemmingway, and inevitably lost. Like most people who don't care about money, money problems plagued him. Highly sexed, he counted some of the most beautiful women of the age amongst his lovers, including Ingrid Bergman. When lovers were not immediately available, he contended himself with prostitutes. Loving and loved in return, he was too much of a bohemian to commit himself to a permanent relationship. He could have been rich, but he never was. He could have happily married, but he never did. Capa's luck ran out when he went to Vietnam in 1953 to cover the war between the French and the Vietnamese and trod on a landmine. Alex Kershaw deserves credit for writing such a meticulously researched and readable biography.
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