War Photography The Spanish Civil War was one of the first conflicts that saw mass-produced photographs in the press nationally and internationally, creating the idea of photojournalism. Whether treating them as faithful historical documents or retouching certain pictures to increase their impact, photographers showed first hand what was happening at the front, shaking public opinion with the immediacy of the images.
The participation of news illustrators in the war activities received much more critical coverage than the work of photographers like Agustí Centelles (1909-1985), whose pioneering work of photojournalism unfolded in Spanish and international magazines throughout the war. One of the reasons for the absence of commentaries regarding his specific value might be, paradoxically, his own importance as a register and archive of the war, a role that didn’t need to be theorized because of its direct relationship with the traumatic reality of the combat. The photographer, whose principal task consisted in documenting the war (and whose images were reproduced in the illustrated press and offered basic material to create photomontage posters) was seen as a metaphor of his tool to capture reality. Both the photographer and his camera were considered witnesses of the atrocities of the war and his identity was confused with that of the events he documented.
The “Commissariat of Propaganda” was one of the few agencies which made publicity of the use of photography. Both the director of publications of the Commissariat, the photographer Pere Català-Pic (1889-1971), as well as Jaume Miravitlles, director of the Commissariat, published commentaries regarding the war photography which, for them, was more than an New acquisitions Agustí Centelles. Fotografías de la Guerra Civil, 1936-1938 Anónimo. Fotografías de la Guerra Civil, 1936-1938
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During the Civil War, hundreds of photographic reports dedicated to the conflict were published in magazines within and outside of Spain. Press photography came to convert the Civil War into one of its favorite subjects, approaching it from very different aspects and allowing the photographer to try out different attitudes: from the documenting of facts to the instantaneous capturing of images of great drama. The work of foreign photographers like Robert Capa (1913-1954) or David Seymour “Chim” (1911-1956) inundated the national and international press. Their works were published in Madrid, one of the most beautifully illustrated books about the war which shows the simultaneous use of documentary photographs in the strictest of senses, with others artificially enacted. The artists manipulated the images in the compositions which illustrated the covers and interior pages of the book, just as was done in the design of the posters that were produced and distributed both within the rearguard as well as at the front.
In one of the few texts of the era which commented on the importance of war photography, published in the magazine Alianza: Semanario de barriada de Radio Chamberí, of the Communist Party, the immediacy of war photography with regard to the conflict and the risks that it entailed were highlighted. It encouraged the reader to consider the photographer as “another combatant”. The underlying risks of the photographic image implicated it beyond merely the limits of representation. The image carries with it the reality of the war. As proof, the article bore the image of a camera with a broken lens, together with the following commentary: “The photo that we publish in this work is another testimony of what we want to say. It belongs to our comrade Luvalmar, and broke in his hands one day due to a bomb’s explosion”.