Slightly Out of Focus
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Since buying Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection, I’ve been amazed by the work of Robert Capa. So I started looking for books about him and found Slightly Out of Focus, Capa’s WWII chronicle.
The book gave me another perspective on WWII. Most accounts are from soldiers, historians or regular people, which all had something in common: they tried to avoid the War. Capa, instead, always tried to be where the action was.
Capa wanted to be a writer, not a photographer, and you can tell it by his work.
His photo were probably not perfect from a technical standpoint, but they got into the action, they give an inside view of the scene, and I think it’s because he wasn’t trained to be a photographer, he just happened to be one.
His unprofessionality is what made his work great, I believe: he understood photography better than most other photographers.
As he said after the book was released, the whole book is based on actual facts, but there are a few fictional elements here and there to have a better flow and make the story a tad more impressive, so it can’t be considered 100% true, even though most of it is.
It doesn’t matter if your interested in photography, you should read this book.
It’ll give you some more info on WWII and you’ll also get to know about a very eclectic individual and an amazing photographer.
This post was written 1 year, 6 months ago on December 9th, 2006 early afternoon.
