These represent the types of pointed questions that you’d get asked by a serious interviewer who’d done his research — not someone kissing up to you, like Bob Pledge at the ICP, and not someone invested in feeding the Capa legend, like his biographer or the curator of his archive. […]
|
Follow me on Mastodon:
@adcoleman@hcommons.social
 |
In his own account of boarding the LCI which took him away from Omaha Beach, Capa describes an explosion that takes place moments after he came aboard, killing several crew members. Based on Lewis’s diary entry, that happened just minutes after they disembarked their troops — somewhere around 0750. If these details add up, then, Capa reached Omaha Beach at 0725 at the very earliest, and clambered into the relative safety of the LCI at 0750, just 25 minutes later. That boat departed Omaha Beach at at 0837. So Capa was at Omaha Beach for a maximum of 72 minutes, following the second-wave troops and photographing them for less than half an hour. […] 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. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014All content of this publication is © copyright 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 by A. D. Coleman unless otherwise noted. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced for commercial purposes without prior written permission. All photos copyright by the individual photographers. "Fair use" allows quotation of excerpts of textual material from this site for educational and other noncommercial purposes.
Published by Flying Dragon LLC.
|
Guest Post 14: Q&A with John Morris (a)
The first of Capa’s Omaha Beach exposures shows the troops disembarking from the LCI on which Capa arrived. The next to last shows Pfc. Huston Riley, who recalls that immediately after helping to rescue him Capa ran for an outgoing LCI. In his memoir “Slightly Out of Focus,” Capa himself states that after he reached that LCI he made no more images of the battle. Thus the “magnificent eleven” constitute not just what Morris managed to “save” but the entirety of Capa’s take from Omaha Beach. […]