This document proves that John Morris was fully aware of, and an active participant in, that SHAEF/MoI censorship system, which fact he conveniently failed to mention in all of his subsequent accounts of the fictional darkroom disaster that supposedly “ruined” Capa’s D-Day films. […]
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Recent research has uncovered a treasure: the protocols for annotating and processing incoming films from the photographers assigned by LIFE magazine to cover the D-Day invasion. It is dated May 8, 1944, less than a month before the event. […] In the end, it seems fittingly ironic that the Occam’s-Razor explanation for all of Capa’s missing D-Day negatives turns out to be the scissors of the censor. The legend of the lost negatives resulted from nothing more or less than the needs of Capa’s outsize ego. […] I have come to believe that Capa’s actions on D-Day resulted from considered planning and calculated risks. He knew that he would have only a short time on the beach. He knew that he had to get back quickly to some ship — preferably the Chase, but if not another — in the convoy scheduled to depart at noon for the English coast. That represented his only hope of getting his films to LIFE on time. […] Those core issues — the brevity of life, the spiral of time, the constancy of change, the cyclic aspects of history and human experience, and the enduring, unbreakable connection between humans and the natural world — weave constantly through Martha Madigan’s commentary on her own work and working method, and make themselves apparent in the work itself. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |