ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the constructed nature of war imagery and asks whether or not its staging—what might be called its manufactured realism—automatically makes such pictures any less “real.” Falling Soldier is renowned as one of the most iconic extant pictures of war. Photographed by Robert Capa, co-founder of the Magnum Photos agency, the image depicts a soldier’s death in September 1936 on an open hillside. Artist Martha Rosler has reflected deeply on the impetus of the “real” in photography, and relatedly, the photograph’s claim to evidence. Furthermore, critically examining the politics and ethics of individual engagement in relation to representations of war has been central to Rosler’s practice. Visually stunning photographs of war have the potential to be mobilized in various and contradictory ways.
