Customer Reviews

Slightly Out of Focus (American Autobiography Series)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After reading the book, I felt a deep sadness, not because of anything Capa had written, but because I realized that I would never get the opportunity to meet the author in person, to ask so many more questions. I wanted to hear for real that playful, romantic Hungarian voice, which I had heard all along in my head, re-tell one of his memoirs. They are humourous, intense and ironic. They are bitter-sweet, magically woven anecdotes spread over the horror and violence of war. The work is so honest, it is as if the reader has just sat down beside a fire-place with Capa and been told a yarn over a bottle of thirty year-old brandy. For us, Robert Capa has composed a memoir of crawling beside American troops assaulting Salerno, of struggling for the picture amidst shells and bullets, about parachuting into Sicily and landing in the first wave on D-Day and about a romance with a rosy-haired lady he calls Pinky. Robert Capa may be not be as famous today as the quality of his life's work entitles him to be, but he is, without a doubt, the most interesting, charismatic and magical personalities with which one may become acquainted on paper. Slightly Out Of Focus has thankfully been re-pressed in this 1999 edition, hopefully exposing more people to the work of this brilliant man. The book is ideal for anyone who might, on a rainy day, feel the urge to talk with an old friend and listen to a magnificent tale.

Slightly Out of Focus, the autobiography by legendary photographer Robert Capa, chronicles his experiences as a photographer for Collier's and Life magazines during World War II. Capa's adventure takes him from his comfortable bed in New York, across the Atlantic, into the African desert, to the beaches of Normandy and the liberation of Paris, through Germany, and finally to a posh London apartment where his journey ends. The book is a delightful read. Over 100 of Capa's breathtaking and thought provoking photographs are scattered throughout its pages. Slightly Out of Focus is ridiculously easy to read. Capa's conversational style and witty banter result in a story that feels more like your favorite novel, than the biography of a war correspondent. The memoirs span only 232 pages, but fully encompass the blood, sweat, and tears shed during the most gruesome war in American history.

Capa throws no punches when he puts his thoughts and experiences into words. He is gut wrenchingly open, honest, and human about himself and the war that he photographs. He accurately shows the not so glamorous, unromantic side of front-line journalism in stories about being too broke to pay his bills, sleeping in bed-bug infested houses, driving for hours over empty deserts, contracting malaria, bureaucratic red tape, and eventually giving up the woman of his dreams to continue photographing the war. Capa is honest enough to admit to all of this and wrote, "I began to dislike this war. The life of a war correspondent wasn't so romantic."

Capa put his life in danger countless times in the book, each time in the quest for the perfect photo that said everything and each time narrowly escaping death. While in Africa, he accidentally wandered into a mine field and had to wait for hours to be rescued. Later, the division that Capa was traveling with was bombed during the night. Capa described it as, "Next morning, when I woke up, there wasn't any tent over me. The camp had been bombed during the night. The blasts had blown away all the tents, although no one was hurt. I was the object of envy and admiration for having slept through it all without stirring." During his time in Europe, Capa joined in the Normandy invasion and parachuted out of planes. Soon after he began, Capa gave up trying to be an impartial observer and assisted in rescuing and transporting wounded soldiers during some of the fiercest fighting. He slept in fox holes, ate C-rations, and helped bury fallen soldiers.

In Slightly Out of Focus, we learn as much about Capa as we do about the war. He unashamedly allows us a constant view into his psyche. It offers a refreshing and helpful glimpse into the struggles of an embedded journalist. He admits when he is frightened, tired, apathetic, angry, or even happy. He talks often in the book of becoming tired of the sickeningly violent monotony that is war. "They were simple pictures and showed how dreary and unspectacular life fighting actually is. The correspondent's war neurosis was setting in...my pictures were sad and empty as the war, and I didn't feel like sending them to the magazine."

In spite of the inherent death and depression of war, Capa finds the everyday humor in extraordinary experiences. Just when the book seems too intense, he makes a witty remark or points out the weakness in human folly and makes you chuckle. He allows you to take the pill of war down without having to dissipate the cold, hard facts, by giving the reader a spoon full of sugar at the same time.

The love story of Capa and "Pinky" (a.k.a. Elaine Justin) also provides a breakup between intense battles. Capa maintains a lighthearted feel in the book by alternating chapters of fighting and death with chapters of his humorous roller-coaster romance. In the end "Pinky" gives up on Capa because, by covering the war instead of being with her, he finally chose between his two great loves. Capa begins and ends the book with the same line, "There is absolutely no reason to get up in the mornings anymore." The reader understands finally, on the 232nd page, that Capa lives to cover wars. In his mind, being a war correspondent isn't a job, it is a destiny. When he isn't covering a war, he is lost, restless, and aimless.

Slightly Out of Focus is jewel deserving five stars. Capa has effectively created a book that captures the feeling of World War II while making it palatable to the average reader. He educates and entertains. The work is believable and down to earth, revealing a transparency uncommon to most authors, but welcomed by readers. In this work, Capa proves himself to be far more than a great photographer. In the words of Capa's good friend, Pulitzer Prize winner John Hersey, "He has humor. He has a clear idea of what makes a great picture: `it is a cut of the whole event,' he says, `which will show more of the real truth of the affair to someone who was not there than the whole scene.' Above all-and this is what shows in his pictures-Capa, who has spent so much energy on inventions for his own person, has deep human sympathy for men and women trapped in reality."

The preface to the book points out that Capa originally wrote it with the intent of it being turned into a movie. The result is an engagingly good collection of war stories.

If, however, you're interested in finding out more about Capa, why, for example, he continually went back into harms way or why he let his relationship with Pinky languish so he could take more war pictures, or what he was trying to capture with his photographs, anything personal at all, you won't find it here.

Instead you'll find some well told war stories (although at times he tries too hard). You'll also be treated to a collection of his photographs. You just won't find the man here.

There is no exaggeration in saying that Capa is a remarkable person - being expelled out of his hometown at the age of 17, struggled and survived and managed to prove himself well in a land completely foreign to himself, developed and maintained a great sense of humor and humanity against all the odds, landed on the "easy red" on the D Day with the Allied's first wave ... From his writing and pictures one can feel great passion. Unlike many war photographers who claim to hate wars (I can't stop thinking of James Nachtway, sorry fans of Jim), Capa would never use a wound to decorate his pictures. This book is very different from other books about wars. A love story is interwoven with Capa's personal account of the WWII. There are also some magnificant photos among the pages. You may have seen them elsewhere but here you can view them together with descriptions written by Capa himself. I have only one complaint - for no obvious reasons the writer of the introduction disclosed the name of the guy who married Capa's loved girl, whose identity Capa had as a gentleman tried hard to conceal. This flaw is however not Capa's.

This is a remarkable book by a great photographer. Robert Capa, as has been said, invented himself. This is evident in this book: as a Hungarian living the the United States during war time (technically an enemy alien) and broke, he managed to effortlessly have a job offered to him, get a passport (as if by magic) and become an American war photographer.

Mr. Capa wrote well for someone who learned English but his marvelous photographs included in this book say much more than the words on the printed page. Some of the photographs were familiar and others were new for me. They are touched with compassion and so involved with the scene as if the camera eye were able to explore the world invisible.

In sum, a wonderful book to read and treasure for Capa's outlook on life, his experiences and his unique photographs.

Capa was not only one of the greatest photographers who ever lived, he was also an amazing storyteller and human being. This book shows his humour and humanity in the world's darkest hour.

45 years after his death, he is still sorely missed.

When I think of the founders of Magnum I see larger than life heros that are always in the right place at the right time for the perfect picture. Not only does this book show that Capa is not larger than life, but a very real man, but he also worked very hard to be at the right place at the right time...not to mention he spent much of his life at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Not overridden with anecdotes of war zones and the battlefield, Capa comes across as incredibly human from the observer's perspective during the years of conflict. Sensitive, witty, charming, and driven, he is truly fantastic and remarkable a storyteller with words as he is with a camera.

I cannot tell you how heart-broken I was when I finished this book. Not because of it's contents, but because I felt like I was losing some magical connection with the soul of my one and only hero. The absolute sincerity of Capa's writing pulls you in and won't let you go, even long after you've finished reading. The book itself is very short- I could have finished it in a day. However, I never wanted it to end and instead paced myself and took a week and a half to finish it. If ever there were a great adventure book, it is this one. If ever there were a great romance novel, it is this one. The end reminds me of Casablanca.
Capa tells you his story with great charisma, candidness and of course, in a sense, sincerity. However, regardless of his version of the truth, the absolute purpose of his story is to establish for you a sense of reality. You will yourself to believe that war is glamorous, and he almost wants to tell you that it is; lie to you. But he knows that he cannot and you know deep in your heart that war is really a grotesque abuse of the human spirit. The juxtaposition of his story and his photographs remind you that it is. He recount of his time huddled under some wine barrels in a tavern in the mountains of Italy reminds you that war is terrible. The simple fact that he was one of the lucky 2/3's of men to survive the jump over the Rhine reminds you that war is terrible. And the disgusting irony of his entrapment in a mine field in North Africa makes you think of the terrible war and the single land mine twenty years later that took this great man's life.

Whether you buy this book or get it from the library does not matter, what matters is that you read it.

If you're a Capa fan, you'll love this book. If you're not, you'll become one.