Capa's Camera

First photographic news from Spain was of wholesale faking. To keep the world's tabloid editors supplied with gore and excitement, one English agency was supposed to have complete sets of both armies' uniforms, ready to re-enact any battle. Then came the flood of propaganda horror pictures, real but limited photographically. The Spanish war's first honest camera-made reputation belongs to Hungarian Robert Capa (LIFE, Jan. 24). Last week 200 of his photographs, in thoroughly first-rate reproductions, made a glass-clear panorama at Manhattan's New School for Social Research. Among them were recent photographs taken at Teruel, showing Loyalist soldiers, casual with cold, going through ruined houses in search of snipers (see cut).

A black-browed fatalist of 24, Capa has strung along with Leftist attacks lightly armed with a Leica. His wife, Photographer Gerda Taro, was crushed by a Leftist tank last year during the retreat from Brunete. Capa's work in Spain has made him one of the world's great photographers and last week's exhibition was his first in the U. S. It was also a nearly definitive collection of Capa's Spanish photographs. For after more than a year of pictorial reporting, interrupted only by a brief visit to the U. S. last autumn, Robert Capa was last week on his way to China.

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