My Life Is Like Blood and Champage, Without the Blood. Or Champagne.

Robert Capa died a good death. For the world’s greatest war photographer, to go out by stepping on a Vietamese landmine, Contax in hand has to be wholly satisfactory. “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” were the famous words attributed to him. One can’t imagine he would be that disappointed.

Blood and Champagne; The Life and Times of Robert Capa by Alex Kershaw

I got this book out of the library because of that quote alone. In brief, I figured Capa was an ultimate badass. And, my own photography needs a whole lot more badass in it. And, of course a book report would be easy money for a blog post, right?

I used to write album reviews for a living, and I was terrible at it. Objectivity kills rock writing, and my heroes all figured that out. I did too, but a little too late. Guys like Robert Christgau or Dave DiMartino inject themselves into their writing in such a way that you are simply forced to care. They’re there in the middle of the music scene, and so you are too. If you’re gonna write about a book, it’s probably even more important to provide that immediate context. So, for me to write about this book, I’d need to talk about how, say, when I was out shooting, I’d recall a moment from Capa’s life and had it inspire me. Good plan.

Except, photography was so incidental to Capa’s life and times, that it’s rarely — and for justifiable reasons — mentioned in the book. The guy hung out (and feuded) with Hemingway, banged (and dumped) Ingrid Bergman, and started (and embezzzled from) Magnum! He faked his name and got into photography to pay the bills. He didn’t develop his own film. Apparently he never spent one braincell on what he was doing photographically, it just allowed him to travel and gamble and party all night.

Any parallels between that and my day-to-day would be some motivational Tony Robbins bullshit.

So, I’ll recap my favorite anecdote from the book, in my own words:

It’s World War Two and Capa needs to get from point A to point B but can’t get there because the roads are too dangerous. Hemingway is nuts, losing his mind, and starts some sort of mercenary operation on his own and commandeers a Jeep to traverse the particularly dangerous bit of map, so Capa tags along behind in another Jeep. Inevitably, Hemingway comes under fire and gets pinned down. He shouts for Capa to turn around and go back. Capa, frozen in fear, or something just stays under his cover. Hemingway, like I said, is nuts and convinced Capa is sitting there hoping that Hemingway gets popped so Capa can get the ultimate shot. That was the end of their friendship.

So that’s the book: An astounding compendium of similarly outlandish stories about this guy, written with extreme credulity. I couldn’t really separate the photographer from the myth. The author, Kershaw, sets it up that Capa, an introverted Hungarian named Andre Friedmann, thought war was a fun game, invented the fictitious American photographer named Robert Capa to be able to sell more photographs, and may have possibly faked his first big scoop, laughing it up until his girlfriend got killed covering the Spanish Revolution, and then spent his life running from (and to) the horror that took his first love from him by becoming the mythical dashing persona he had invented. Capa preferred women over photography, but preferred gambling over sex. Who knows what really drove him? Where did his eye for detail came from? What he thought when he actually took the pictures themselves? That’s all a mystery the book doesn’t even try to answer. But, the man sure was an exciting character.

And, if they make a biopic, Michael Imperioli (pic) has to play Robert Capa (pic) right?

For some reason, I haven’t been moved to take many pictures since finishing Blood and Champagne. Maybe I need to start palling around with Mark Cuban or something. Or, go to Afghanistan.

Not likely.

Postcript: I Imagine Capa, broke after a three-night bender, all his money lost on poker, drinking his last dime to this Ellington piece.

“All The Things You Are” – Duke Ellington

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One Response

1. Chrissie says:

   6 March, 2009 at 2:10 am

   Great review Mick. I think I may have to hunt down a copy and read it, aswell. It sounds like a fascinating life story.

   Reply