The physical evidence proves inarguably that the persistent sprocket-hole intrusion in Capa’s exposures did not result from the mythical one-time “emulsion melt” in LIFE’s London darkroom, but instead represents a persistent minor malfunction in one of Capa’s two Contaxes. It is visible to the naked eye in dozens of Capa’s rolls of 35mm film from January 1944 onward. The fact that some rolls don’t show this suggests that they were made with his second Contax, which didn’t have this problem. It also indicates that no one at LIFE noticed or cared about this enough to advise Capa to get his camera checked and realigned. […]
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Robert Capa’s missing and supposedly destroyed D-Day negatives — the ones he shipped to London from Weymouth on the morning of June 7, the ones purportedly destroyed in a freak darkroom accident that night — sit today, intact and available for study, where they’ve sat for years: in the Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography in New York. […] I believe that a grave violation of the National Press Photographers Association’s Code of Ethics has surfaced in a video presentation from late May of this year on TIME magazine’s website. I am therefore calling on your Ethics Committee to investigate the matter, using the full power of the association’s good standing, influence, and wide membership to publish the findings. If any of the key figures in the production of this deceptive publication hold current NPPA membership, appropriate sanctions should of course follow. […] The TIME video shows all of Capa’s original black & white negatives from June 6, 1944 (only nine of which have actually survived as original camera negatives), plus nine negatives that are purported to be some of the Capa negatives that were supposedly spoiled during development. The trouble is, the negatives TIME displays in this video, which supposedly show some of the spoiled Capa negatives, are totally faked. These negatives are a complete fabrication — and nowhere in the video do the producers explain what they did, how they did it, or why. […] |
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Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (14)
These negatives in the Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography constitute portions of the rolls sent by Robert Capa to John Morris, LIFE magazine’s London picture editor, upon docking at Weymouth, England on the morning of June 7 — in other words, they represent the negatives supposedly “ruined” in the demonstrably mythical darkroom mishap caused by the possibly mythical “darkroom lad” Dennis Banks. […]