So we end up back where we started out — but with a considerable twist: a major newspaper putting its imprimatur on our revisionist version of the Capa D-Day story, and the originator and most dedicated teller of that now-tattered tale, John G. Morris, at long last ceasing and desisting from repeating yet again his discredited version. […]
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We were about defending and expanding interpretive multiplicity beyond the ideological vanishing point to a place where all sides of the conflict became visible — combatants and civilians caught in the crossfire. The more coverage the better. To me there was no such thing as too many pictures. […] At many agencies, Magnum included, photographers became specialists in particular conflict zones. They learned appropriate languages, earned the camaraderie of local journalists and fixers, purchased vehicles, and in some cases even took apartments in the capital city. To the mainstream media it was a form of branding. […] Magnum’s biography is not just a narrative of funny anecdotes, personal heroism, or critical interventions aimed at the cognoscenti. To me there’s a real narrative, a true set of values behind the myth. It’s a frat-house given to sophomoric antics with members sometimes capable of making extraordinary pictures. […] All members of the Capa Consortium — ICP, Magnum, Time, Inc., John Morris — face the 75th anniversary of D-Day, coming up in June 2019, on which occasion Capa’s D-Day photos and the contextualizing tale thereof will once again have a central role — whether in its original and now discredited mythic form or in an updated, realistic, credible, fact-based version. […] |
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