Despite the claims by John Morris, Robert Capa, and others that he made 106 exposures at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, the actual evidence — the negatives themselves, and Capa’s own caption notes — verifies that he exposed only one roll there before running away, making a maximum of 36 exposures, of which only 11 were successful and survived. The rest of his D-Day take constituted nothing more than pre-battle stock shots with negligible historic value, generically replicated by every photographer on every ship heading to Normany that night. […]
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Film left in my darkroom drying cabinet for almost two hours at temperatures that ranged from 80°F to 150°F — and between 135°F-150°F for an hour — remained intact. So I feel confident in asserting that the emulsion of gelatin-silver film, in 1944 as today, did not and does not melt and run down its acetate backing after just a few minutes in a closed wooden cabinet heated even to 150°F by any simple, off-the-shelf heating unit. This is a fiction. […] Contrary to picture editor John Morris’s narrative, these “damaged” frames actually show us samples of film that has received proper development, fixing, and drying. They also appear to have suffered drastic in-camera overexposure. If they typify the three rolls that held Capa’s estimated 106 exposures from Omaha Beach, then all but the “Magnificent Eleven” frames arrived at LIFE‘s London offices irreversibly overexposed (by Capa himself) in their pupal or latent-image stage. […] When the film gets processed in London, LIFE Picture Editor John Morris discovers, to his horror, that LIFE’s star photojournalist (and Morris’s close friend) blew his assignment, arguably the biggest story of the war to date. A major embarrassment for Capa, for Morris, for LIFE, for Time-Life, and for the profession for which Capa has become the poster boy. So Morris concocts a tale of botched processing by a kid, covering the asses of all concerned, and turning Capa’s 11 correct exposures into splinters from the true cross instead of the paltry results of a terrified bumbler. […] |
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Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (5)
What pictures, existing and merely reported by the photographer and others, did Robert Capa make at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, and what do they have to tell us? We know (from the caption notes he sent to John Morris in London with his films that he returned from Normandy) that three of the four 35mm rolls he sent he’d actually made on shipboard the night before. That leaves only one roll of images from the landing itself. […]