1937–1938

CHINA

In 1937, as the war in Spain dragged on and the republicans were forced to retreat in the face of the inexorable advance of the fascist forces, another conflict broke out. Japan, pursuing its imperialist policy, had already occupied the province of Manchuria and now invaded China. This extremely violent conflict—two hundred thousand people are estimated to have died in the Nanjing Massacre—would not end until 1945. Despite their previous (and subsequent) confrontation, the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek and the communist army of Mao Zedong formed an alliance to resist the Japanese invader.

Robert Capa, grieving over Gerda Taro’s death in July 1937, sailed to China to carry out an assignment for the French magazines Regards and Ce soir andthe British Picture Post and The Illustrated London News, as well as the American magazine Life, with which he signed a contract in the autumn of 1937. The journey started in Marseille, from where he set sail in January 1938 with the documentary film-maker Joris Ivens and the cameraman John Fernhout to photograph the Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion. Ivens, a Dutch film director with communist sympathies, had been in Spain, like Capa, where he made a documentary entitled Spanish Earth with Ernest Hemingway.

In September, after two months in China, Capa returned to Paris. He had taken some Kodak colour films and four of the resulting photographs were published in the 17 October 1938 issue of Life. Colour was still a rarity in the press, used only by the Germans and Americans. These were the first colour photographs that Capa published. He subsequently used this medium frequently, especially in his first reports on the Second World War.