So TIME/LIFE has made a slow-motion but dramatic about-face, going from studiously ignoring the myth of the London darkroom disaster at its public birthing in Charles Wertenbaker’s 1944 book and Capa’s certifying it in his 1947 memoir to enthusiastically promulgating it seven decades later. […]
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Capa resigned his lucrative staff position at LIFE in January 1947 to go freelance once more. He may have made that choice in part so as not to bite the hand that fed him when his fictionalized memoir, “Slightly Out of Focus,” came out that fall, with its first formal, on-the-record claim directly from him that the magazine’s London staff had ruined his D-Day films. […] Capa’s account of his landing in his book “Slightly Out of Focus” clearly had been “pumped up” for sales. Capa apparently lifted the carnage that occurred elsewhere on Omaha Beach and superimposed it on his own much less deadly experiences. One only has to take a fresh, unbiased look at his photos for proof. […] Intermittent enemy artillery fire covered the area of the “Roman ruins” on the Easy Read sector of Omaha Beach, where Capa landed, but it primarily targeted larger landing craft, and was not capable of stopping an infantry advance. The area of the ruins was in fact a seam in the enemy defenses, one that would prove fatal to the Germans and a godsend to the Americans. […] Capa’s two photos have become iconic images symbolizing inertia, fear and even the failure of nerve of the common soldier on the beaches of Normandy. What a travesty that these men who made decisive contributions to the success of the campaign, despite every danger and hindrance, should have become poster boys for lack of resolve under fire. And all as the result of a caption that told the wrong story. […] |
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