Photographer Robert Capa

Year 1936

Location Spain

Robert Capa’s Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, or The Falling Soldier, was taken in September 1936, during the battle for Cerro Muriano in the Spanish Civil War. The picture was published in Vu magazine that month and in Life in July 1937, propelling Capa to international fame. It seemed to symbolise the drama of the war, the unknown anti-fascist soldier representing Republican Spain, charging forward to defend himself and being struck down. Rumours that the death was staged began to circulate after the Second World War, and came to public attention with Phillip Knightley’s 1975 book The First Casualty. It has been debated ever since.

This contact sheet shows original 35mm negatives leading up to the frame of the falling soldier. The roll of film was cut into snippets by Capa’s Paris darkroom assistant, some in single frames, some in groups, but the actual “falling soldier” frame was lost long ago. Modern prints come from a copy negative held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The soldier is now named as Federico Borrell Garcia. Capa’s biographer, Richard Whelan, author of the catalogue for the Barbican Art Gallery’s forthcoming Capa exhibition (from October 17), concludes that “Capa’s photographs leading up to The Falling Soldier depict ‘fooling around’ rather than posing or actual fighting. But the moment captured in The Falling Soldier was deadly earnest. Garcia stood up for what was intended to be a heroic portrait, but which became, completely unexpectedly, a picture of a man who has just been mortally wounded.”