Estimate: € 100.000–120.000

Vintage silver print

12,4 x 18,6 cm

Photographer's "Black Star" credit stamp and handwritten notation "Death suddenly comes to a soldier" in pencil on the reverse.

It is surely the most legendary and most frequently reproduced war photograph in the history: Capa’s Falling Soldier, also entitled Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death or Death of a Loyalist Soldier. A champion of the Republican cause, Capa travelled to the front of the Spanish Civil War while on assignment for the French magazine VU. The noble fight of Spanish citizens against the fascist forces resonated with him deeply. He captured this Republican militiaman with his Leica in mid-fall after being hit by an enemy bullet. On September 23, 1936 VU published the photo on a page spread. The image later reached a much larger audience when it appeared in Life in July 1937. The six pages photo story was accompanied by a text by Ernest Hemingway, addressing the seriousness of the conflict to the American public. Its appearance immediately made Capa a star of photojournalism and also signaled a shift in American opinion about the conflict. The image has been as contro- versial as few photographs in the world as critics have doubted the documentary value and authenticity of the scene. The tentative identification of the dying militiaman as an anarchist named Federico Borrell seemed to quell that controversy, but still the speculation has not ended. The rare vintage print offered here originates from the Black Star archive in New York. The Black Star agency was founded in December 1935 and was also a photo supplier for magazines such as Life. It was the photo agency for which Robert Capa worked during the Spanish Civil War. Capa was represented by this agency until 1938. After that he joined Pix Agency. The present gelatin silver print (fibre-base paper) was blacklight tested and examined by the conservators of the Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid). They concluded that this print was made between 1936 and 1938, when Robert Capa was still working for Black Star, and is therefore one of only a handful vintage prints left of this iconic image, which is undoubtedly one of the most unforgettable images in our visual culture. Recently, a vintage print sold for 162,500 dollars in New York (Lot 104, Phillips Photographs Auction, New York, 9 April 2018).

Start price: €60.000