{"id":21832,"date":"2014-07-27T23:49:38","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T03:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=21832"},"modified":"2014-07-31T09:53:38","modified_gmt":"2014-07-31T13:53:38","slug":"alternate-history-robert-capa-on-d-day-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2014\/07\/27\/alternate-history-robert-capa-on-d-day-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (11)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.<\/a>An Exchange with John G. Morris<\/strong><\/p>\n

On July 4, I received the following email from former LIFE<\/em> Picture Editor John G. Morris:<\/p>\n

Dear A. D.:<\/em><\/p>\n

I have just returned from ten days in NY and Toronto, where I heard that you and Ross Baughman were attacking me. Thinking of you as both a friend and an intelligent critic, I thought little of it, but this afternoon I printed out all 12 pieces you posted about me, and am shocked. You didn’t even have the courtesy to check with me or ask me to reply. Nor do you, as far as I have seen so far, refer to my book <\/em>Get the Picture, which devotes most of the first chapter to D-Day. You even have the nerve to say that Capa didn’t do his job.<\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t think I need this at my advanced age (97).<\/em><\/p>\n

John<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

I replied that same day, as follows:<\/p>\n

Dear John:<\/p>\n

I’ve received your email complaining about the recent series of posts<\/a> at my blog, Photocritic International<\/em>, relating to Robert Capa’s actions and output on Omaha Beach on D-Day, the subsequent fate of his negatives, and related matters.<\/p>\n

First, as you and I have never spent any private or personal time together, but merely crossed paths briefly in professional situations, I’m not sure we qualify as friends; we’re barely acquainted. As for my intelligence as a critic, I leave that to others to determine, as always.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

John Morris, “Get the Picture” (1998), cover.<\/p><\/div>\n

I gather that you haven’t actually read most of those posts you printed out. You write, “Nor do you, as far as I have seen so far, refer to my book\u00a0Get the Picture<\/em>, which devotes most of the first chapter to D-Day.” In fact, your book Get the Picture<\/em> is cited in many of the posts. Links to online versions of passages from Get the Picture<\/em> \u2014\u00a0and to various interviews with and profiles of you, from print and video sources, in which you reiterate the version of Capa’s D-Day and yours that appears in that book\u00a0 \u2014 appear throughout the series, as do assorted quotes from you.<\/p>\n

The very first of my series of posts<\/a> on this subject contains links to no less than 10 of your various recountings of your version, starting with the passages from Get the Picture<\/em> in 1998 and moving forward chronologically to the latest, from 2014. Readers of these posts have frequent and ready access to your version of those events; pretending otherwise does not serve you well.<\/p>\n

\"J.<\/a>

J. Ross Baughman, Facebook note to John Morris, 5-28-14.<\/p><\/div>\n

You write, “You didn’t even have the courtesy to check with me or ask me to reply.” But Ross Baughman, who wrote the posts that kicked off this inquiry, sent you a Facebook message in this regard in late May, which you ignored.<\/p>\n

Moreover, you have told the same story<\/a>, virtually word for word, for 70 years. Most recently, at the end of your June 24 ICP dialogue with Robert Pledge<\/a> (which I viewed on streaming video), Stephen Perloff, the respected editor of The Photo Review<\/em><\/a>, a long-running U.S. photo journal, asked you a very specific question: “Capa’s caption notes on his four rolls of 35mm film sent to you in London when he returned from Normandy indicate that three of those rolls he made aboard the U.S.S. Chase<\/em> the night before the landing. He therefore exposed only a single roll on Omaha Beach, correct?” (I’m quoting from memory.) That’s a simple question, with a simple yes-or-no answer. Instead of responding, you went into your standard account of waiting anxiously for the film, the looming deadline, the “darkroom lad,” etc.<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>

Robert Capa, D-Day image captions, Contax 35mm Roll 2.<\/p><\/div>\n

It seems clear, therefore, that you intend to stick to the story you’ve told all these years, no matter how many holes anyone pokes in it. But an invitation to reply is always implicit in any challenge to a narrative. So of course you’re welcome to respond, at whatever length you choose, in a Guest Post at my blog.<\/p>\n

If you do so, however, I hope it’s clear that mere repetition of the same tired and increasingly dubious narrative won’t suffice. You can’t simply copy and paste in the set piece from Get the Picture<\/em>. Precise questions require precise answers here.<\/p>\n

There followed a list of questions intended to provoke a response (if possible), and also to clarify some of the murky and\/or contested aspects of the standard story. At the end of those queries I wrote,<\/p>\n

These represent the types of pointed questions that you’d get asked by a serious interviewer who’d done his research \u2014\u00a0not someone kissing up to you, like Bob Pledge at the ICP, and not someone invested in feeding the Capa legend, like his biographer [Richard Whelan] or the curator of his archive [Cynthia Young]<\/span>. If you’re prepared to answer those questions, and a few more like them, I’ll make as much space available at my blog as you care to use. If not, that decision will speak for itself.<\/p>\n

I’m sure you don’t need this at 97. I don’t enjoy prodding someone your age \u2014\u00a0but you continue to repeat and reinforce a narrative that is, at least in part, a pack of lies, so I have little choice. If it’s any consolation, had these questions occurred to me when I first read\u00a0Slightly Out of Focus<\/em>\u00a0back in the late ’60s, I’d have asked them then, back in your middle years and my salad days.<\/p>\n

Ironically, had that\u00a0TIME<\/em>\u00a0video with its fictitious “ruined” negatives<\/a> and your voiceover and imprimatur not come out on this past May 29, these questions would never have arisen. So you have only yourself to blame for not forestalling them by objecting to the inclusion of those forgeries.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

On July 9, I received this email:<\/p>\n

Dear A. D.:<\/em><\/p>\n

Response coming soon.<\/em><\/p>\n

John<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>\u2022<\/p>\n

\""Robert<\/a>

“Robert Capa: D-Day” (2004), cover.<\/p><\/div>\n

A week thereafter, I received\u00a0a copy of\u00a0D-Day: Robert Capa<\/em>, published on the 60th anniversary of the battle in 2004 by Edition Point de Vues, a French house, in both French and English.<\/p>\n

I’d recently become aware of this book, a copy of which Morris mailed to me from Paris, but hadn’t had a chance to see it. It’s a\u00a0handsome little production, which includes the following:<\/p>\n