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Slightly Out of Focus

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Slightly Out of Focus

By: Robert Capa
Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
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About this listen

In 1942, a dashing young man who liked nothing so much as a heated game of poker, a good bottle of scotch, and the company of a pretty girl hopped a merchant ship to England. He was Robert Capa, the brilliant and daring photojournalist, and Collier's magazine had put him on assignment to photograph the war raging in Europe. In this book, Capa recounts his terrifying journey through the darkest battles of World War II and shares his memories of the men and women of the Allied forces who befriended, amused, and captivated him along the way. His photographs are masterpieces - John G. Morris, Magnum Photos' first executive editor, called Capa "the century's greatest battlefield photographer" - and his writing is by turns riotously funny and deeply moving.

From Sicily to London, Normandy to Algiers, Capa experienced some of the most trying conditions imaginable, yet his compassion and wit shine throughout this book. Charming and profound, Slightly Out of Focus is a marvelous memoir told by an extraordinary man.

©1999 Cornell Capa (P)2019 Tantor Armed Forces Art Europe Germany Military Special & Elite Forces England War
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Clearly the choices were stark and it was often a choice of the least worst thing. However there is a zest for life and adventure and something else is in play. A big character who stood up and embraced the history of his time.

It tells a story of mastery in opportunity taking

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just incredible, Robert capa is a huge inspiration to me, and I cannot recommend this book enough

what a person, what a story

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After listening to the amazing ‘It’s what I do’ by Lindsey Addario and Don McCullin’s ‘Unreasonable
Behaviour’ I felt really let down by this book.

So much of it seems to focus on clever things he did and said, rather than on the situations he was in and the images he took. I don’t feel he comes across well. It feels shallow and trite and seems to lack empathy or much in the way of interest in anything other than himself and his love life.

The account of his landing on Omaha beach is pretty amazing, and probably makes it worth wading through the rest of it for, but having seen his photographs and read a little about his life, this was a real disappointment and not even in the same league as the two books I mentioned earlier.

I must also say I really struggled with the narration. I just don’t feel it fitted the narrative at all, and made the already ‘slick’ parts of dialogue seem even more so. This may have contributed to my feeling that the book was a little shallow and I found it hard to separate the two things.

I wanted to love this book, but I really didn’t at all.

Superficial and dissapointing

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