Slightly Out of Focus

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 correspon

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.

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.

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.