The Guardian has a feature on war photography in which ten photographers who have worked in combat zones around the world over the last few decades talk about "the shot that almost got me." It's a stunning collection of shots that is both confronting and moving. Instead of using one of their shots to illustrate this post I've turned to two photographs of the great archetypal war photographer Robert Capa, who famously said "If the shots are no good, you're not close enough." Above is one of the images from the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach of 6th June 1944 that survived a careless lab assistant's melting of all but ten of the frames he shot that day in his eagerness to see the shots.
I was lucky enough to see a retrospective exhibition of his war photos at the Photographer's Gallery in London in 1997 (as well as one on his wife, the incredibly under-rated Gerda Taro, at the Barbican in 2008.) The second photo was on a wall by itself, the only wall in the gallery that was painted red. It's the last image he took, whilst he was accompanying French forces in the Indochina war in May 1954. After taking it he stepped onto a landmine and died soon after. A reminder that it's not always seeking the most dramatic shot that does for war photographers.
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