Richard Whelan’s work on all matters related to the subjects of Robert and Cornell Capa should be considered fatally compromised and entirely unreliable, except when their overall narratives and specific claims can be verified by credible outside sources. It will take decades to undo the contamination of the literature on Robert Capa that traces directly to Whelan’s efforts on Cornell Capa’s behalf. […]
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Taken in tandem with Richard Whelan’s acknowledgment that he, Cornell Capa, and John G. Morris had effectively buried the Hansel Mieth letter about Robert Capa’s staging of “Falling Soldier” for 35 years, I view this as a confession of abject failure to fulfill the ethical obligations of biographer and historian. […] In short, we have clear evidence of a pattern of intimidation and obstruction of independent Capa research by individuals at the very top of the ICP chain of command, going back to the institution’s origins. This does not bode well for the future of Capa scholarship, nor for the future of ICP. Moreover, it raises serious questions about ICP’s claim to credible status as a research institution. […] As our research has made clear, ICP has to this day assiduously avoided even the most elementary investigation of Capa’s D-Day materials. Eschewing such inquiry effectively constitutes a passive obstruction of research. But Cornell Capa also took an active, aggressive approach to that same end. […] After Robert Capa’s death, Cornell Capa took physical possession of his negatives, handling licensing rights for Robert’s photos and writings, including passages from Slightly Out of Focus. This ensured that the string of subsequent Capa books, and books in which Capa’s images appeared — whether or not published directly through Cornell — frequently reiterated the D-Day myth. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |