Robert Capa captured the Spanish civil War and shocking war scene during WWII. He was so committed to capturing the reality of war, he coined the term “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough” (referring to war photographers). In the image above, Capa captures a soldier landing on the coast but it is difficult to tell if there are other men pictured in the background. Regardless, the lone solder gives the viewer a sense of dread for what’s to come.
Sebastião Salgado is a world traveler who focuses on capturing the poor and the powerless as well as the beauty in nature. His photography style can be described as highly formal and documentative, he gravitates towards capturing the negative impacts of globalization on people around the world. Above is an image of firefighters in Kuwait extinguishing a flame along the coast. The focus of the image isn’t the firefighters themselves but the large cloud of smoke the fire is creating which captures the scale of the destruction caused by the fire.
The “poor and powerless” reference should be cited. Also knowing that Capa was there on D-Day photographing raises the significance of the images. The Kuwait fires were oil fires that were deliberately set and Salgado has since published a book about them.