The Falling Soldier

On September 5, 1936, at Cerro Muriano during the Spanish Civil War, 22-year-old Robert Capa raised his Leica II and pressed the shutter without looking through the finder as Iberian Federation anarchist militiaman Federico Borrell García was struck by a bullet.

Borrell collapses backward down a parched slope, rifle slipping from his right hand, arms flung wide. Published first in VU magazine and later LIFE, it shocked the world and established Capa's lifelong maxim: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." It is universally cited as the greatest war photograph ever made.