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. […]
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By any standards, the touring Robert Capa retrospective launched by Cornell Capa via Magnum in 1960 proved an overwhelming success. The show toured in three sets through 1969, with stops at no fewer than 100 venues across North America and Europe: museums, college and university galleries and student unions, high schools, banks, churches, public libraries, even county fairs. […] The promulgation of a fictionalized version of Robert Capa’s actions on D-Day and the subsequent fate of his Omaha Beach negatives constitute the worm in the apple, the rot at the very core of the foundation myth of the International Center of Photography — the Center’s “original sin,” as it were, the first skeleton in its closet. Known to ICP’s founder, Cornell Capa, Robert’s younger brother, as far back as 1944, the truth got papered over long before ICP was even a gleam in Cornell’s eye. […] I am uncomfortable watching an interrogation that is misguided if related to some elusive standard of photojournalism. … Pressing Steve McCurry for explanations when one already knows the reasons he used Photoshop — to create a more saleable, viewable image — evades more serious issues about who controls photography, and when and how to liberate it. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |
Spring Fever 2016: Bits & Pieces (2)
On the Friday of Memorial Day weekend here on Staten Island we suddenly plunged from a chilly spring straight into hot summer. Nothing gradual about it. I was ready for some warm, but I prefer a slow slide into it and a slow climb out. And our then-recently planted veggies seemed skeptical about the sharp […]