The power of a photograph

 "Falling soldier" by Robert Capa

At first, I was looking for a colourful and modern photo, but I chose this because it's very striking to see a man losing his life in a second.

This picture is called "Death of a loyalist soldier"or "Falling soldier". The man who appears in it was Federico Borrell Garcia, and he was 25 years old.

It's one of the most well-known photographies of Spanish civil war, and it was taken by Robert Capa on 5th September in 1936.

When Robert took the photo, he was with her girlfriend, Gerda. She was German and the photographer too. When the war was ending, Gerda died of a cannonball.

The photo was captured at the same moment that a bullet killed Federico. He was wearing a white T-shirt, light colour trousers, shoes and a leather belt, and in his right hand he had a riffle.

During all the day, Capa was taking a lot of photographies to do a report, and this was the last photo that he took. It transmits me pain and sadness because I can't imagine what was the photographer's reaction when he saw that a man had dead in front of him.

All the images that Robert took the day of Federico's death, were published for first time on the 23rd September of 1936 in a French magazine.

This picture created a lot of opinions on the population. There were people that thought that it wasn't a real and spontaneous image. They said that it was an assembly and Federico posed for the photo.

Other people thought that it was a true picture that Capa did during the war.

But the true history of this history of this photo is that the 5th of September was a quiet day, so Robert went out with some soldiers to do some photographies of a false attack, when suddendly, they were victims of unexpected shoots.

Carla Baena

4t A