{"id":23112,"date":"2014-11-30T23:31:44","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T04:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=23112"},"modified":"2014-12-01T10:50:45","modified_gmt":"2014-12-01T15:50:45","slug":"alternate-history-robert-capa-on-d-day-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2014\/11\/30\/alternate-history-robert-capa-on-d-day-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (17)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.<\/a>“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” \u2014\u00a0Napoleon<\/em><\/p>\n

John Morris opened his 1998 memoir Get the Picture: A Personal History of Photojournalism<\/a>\u00a0with yet another boilerplate retelling of the June 7, 1944 darkroom catastrophe that he claimed had destroyed all but eleven of Robert Capa’s D-Day negatives. He led with that card for good reason: Readers would anticipate it, as it’s the only story in his repertoire both familiar and resonant beyond the narrow confines of photojournalism’s history. No less important,\u00a0it marks the point where Morris’s own legend begins.<\/p>\n

That fiction\u00a0has been very, very good to John Morris. Safe to say that no one would have interviewed him on D-Day anniversary after D-Day anniversary, or asked him to tell his story thereof over and over again, if it consisted of\u00a0nothing more than\u00a0that Capa had sent him a mere eleven exposures of the landing, which he’d had printed and shipped to\u00a0LIFE<\/em>. That hardly constitutes a tale you could dine out on for decades.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

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

Were it not for the myth\u00a0of the melted emulsions (and its potency as a visual image), Morris would be even more obscure as a relevant cultural reference point today than his boss at LIFE<\/em>, Wilson Hicks, then the chief picture editor at that magazine, or\u00a0Tom Hopkinson,\u00a0editor of the British magazine Picture Post<\/em> \u2014 names\u00a0you rarely hear today outside of courses in the history of photojournalism. As it stands (or has stood until now), the dramatic emulsion-melt fable\u00a0functions as the key moment in Morris’s professional life.<\/p>\n

Not that I view that unpredictable consequence as the motive for Morris’s confabulation. In my opinion, he created this story not to initiate a legend but to protect one \u2014 the already widespread legend of Capa as “the world’s greatest war photographer” \u2014 as well as to protect Capa’s reputation, his own, and that of\u00a0LIFE<\/em>\u00a0magazine, all three intertwined at that critical moment.<\/p>\n

Certainly that myth has loomed large in Capa’s legend. He would surely have survived the professional and personal embarrassment of having succumbed to an untypical panic attack on Omaha Beach. But would we have adoring videos, films, and novels, a Robert Capa D-Day action figure and a Capa D-Day graphic novel, if the world had known from D-Day on that he’d made just eleven exposures and fled the field after 30 minutes?<\/p>\n

John Morris Hangs Tough<\/strong><\/p>\n

I offered John Morris \u00a0the opportunity to respond, in a Guest Post<\/a>, to the\u00a0most recent\u00a0disclosures I’d made, derived from my research in the International Center of Photography’s Capa Archive. On October 24, after reading the first two posts in that\u00a0series, “In the Capa Archives,”<\/a>\u00a0he sent me the following email:<\/p>\n

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

I stand by my account of what happened in the London office of <\/em>Life magazine on June 7, 1944\u00a0<\/em>as first published in my book\u00a0<\/em>Get the Picture, A Personal History of Photojournalism\u00a0(Random House 1998; University of Chicago Press 2002).<\/em><\/p>\n

Further details of what happened that evening are also available in the interview with me by Mark Edward Harris<\/a> that has just been published in issue 106 of\u00a0<\/em>Black & White\u00a0magazine, dated December 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>

Robert Capa, “Slightly Out of Focus” (1947), cover.<\/p><\/div>\n

I appreciate the research by J. Ross Baughman<\/a>, indicating that there may never have been any images on three of the four rolls of 35 mm film from the beach landing that were developed by Dennis Banks in the\u00a0<\/em>Life\u00a0London darkroom. Thus Dennis may have blamed himself unnecessarily. Until recently I accepted his explanation as true, and so did Robert Capa, in his book\u00a0<\/em>Slightly Out of Focus.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is no surprise to me that ICP has the negatives and contact prints of the films which Robert Capa shot on the [U.S.S. Samuel] Chase en route to France on June 4 and 5, with his handwritten captions, and on his June 7 return trip to Normandy. The\u00a0<\/em>Life\u00a0London darkroom printed off these negatives at the time, in the normal way.<\/em><\/p>\n

That’s all I have to say now.<\/em><\/p>\n

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

\u2022<\/p>\n

\"B&W<\/a>

B&W magazine, issue 106 (December2014), cover<\/p><\/div>\n

In point of fact, when one reads that recently published interview, “Rearview Mirror:\u00a0John\u2008G. Morris: Normandy, 1944,”<\/a>\u00a0it becomes clear that Morris no longer “stand[s] by [his] account of what happened in the London office of Life<\/em> magazine on June 7, 1944 as first published in [his]\u00a0book\u00a0Get the Picture<\/i>.” Despite the fact that Harris spends the interview lobbing softballs at Morris, and Morris mostly trots out his pat answers, the research and evidence presented at this blog over the past six\u00a0months have forced Morris\u00a0to make significant revisions to and recantations of his narrative\u00a0of the past 70 years re Capa’s D-Day pictures and their fate.<\/p>\n

For all its succinctness, therefore, the above email from Morris contains a goodly amount of obfuscation.\u00a0To wit:<\/p>\n

\u2022 In the interview, Morris acknowledges that the films Capa\u00a0shipped to him on June 7, 1944 most likely contained\u00a0only 11 exposures total from the Normandy landing \u2014 quite a change from his previous claim that those exposures represented what he “saved from Robert Capa\u2019s four rolls of film on the landing on Omaha Beach.” (See\u00a0this\u00a0June 7, 2011\u00a0interview for France24\u00a0TV<\/a>, at timestamp 3:10.)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Morris also acknowledges that he never saw any\u00a0actual evidence of emulsion melt resulting from an overheated film-drying cabinet. Of course, he’s still claiming that he “saved” those pictures. But if no emulsion melt took place, and\u00a0Capa made only those eleven images on Omaha Beach, then no images got “lost” \u2014 and no images got “saved.” The film Capa exposed on D-Day and sent to Morris\u00a0simply got processed and printed as usual in LIFE<\/em>‘s London lab.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>

John Morris interview, B&W magazine, issue 106 (December 2014)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u2022 Morris doubles down on the assertion that the rest of the 35mm film he received from Capa was “blank” \u2014\u00a0a strategic mistake, since the evidence suggests that, at most, the only blank film he got from Capa was the first two-thirds of the Omaha Beach roll.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Morris reaffirms that he threw away all the remaining 3-2\/3 rolls of supposedly “blank” film \u2014\u00a0another strategic error, since Capa’s four rolls of pre-invasion 35mm film survive intact.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Morris acknowledges familiarity with the four rolls of pre-invasion 35mm film, at the same time providing no indication that he’d received a prior shipment of pre-invasion films from Capa.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Morris asserts that “darkroom lad” Dennis Banks really existed and continued working for LIFE<\/em> for some years, a story still unverified in any particular. Originally offered up as sacrificial lamb, the individual responsible for “ruining” Capa’s films in the overheated drying cabinet, Banks now gets converted conveniently into the person who convinced Morris of the erroneous notion that this actually happened.<\/p>\n

\n

Fascinating revisionism here, with Morris doing what in science they call “saving the appearances”: trying feverishly to patch the holes in a paradigm or narrative that’s starting to leak like a sieve.<\/p>\n

\""This<\/a>

“This Is War! Robert Capa at Work” (2007), cover<\/p><\/div>\n

Mark Edward Harris, Morris’s interviewer, informs me that at the time he conducted this exchange with Morris, in the summer of 2014, he himself hadn’t read any of the posts in this investigative series. Nor had he done any preparatory research, such as reading Richard Whelan’s text<\/a> in the 2007 catalogue\u00a0This Is War! Robert Capa at Work<\/em>, with its newly minted, unsupported, and apparently baseless claim that on June 5 Capa sent Morris the pre-invasion films, which he had processed and printed, put through the censorship system, and shipped to LIFE<\/em> on June 6.<\/p>\n

Thus Harris asked no questions to provoke any updating of the standard, rehearsed narrative from Morris, whose answers in the interview nonetheless seem unilaterally calculated to neutralize some of the charges we brought against him<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

On November 1, \u00a0I responded to the above email from Morris\u00a0as follows:<\/p>\n

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

\"John<\/a>

John Morris, “Get the Picture” (2013), screenshot<\/p><\/div>\n

Thanks for your recent email, with its information about the interview in <\/em>B&W magazine. I’ve read it, and found the new details you included extremely helpful in clarifying what happened on the night of June 7th in London.<\/em><\/p>\n

I’ve passed it along to Ross Baughman, so he could see your acknowledgment of his analysis of the films.<\/em><\/p>\n

But I’m confused by the last paragraph in your email, which says, “It is no surprise to me that ICP has the negatives and contact prints of the films which Robert Capa shot on the Chase en route to France on June 4 and 5, with his handwritten captions, and on his June 7 return trip to Normandy. The <\/em>Life London darkroom printed off these negatives at the time, in the normal way.” You don’t mention this in the <\/em>B&W interview. I’m trying to establish a timeline, and I don’t know how to fit that in. Perhaps you can help.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s what I think the available evidence verifies:<\/em><\/p>\n

1. Capa boarded the U.S.S. Samuel Chase sometime between June 2 (when boarding began) and June 4. He was surely aboard on June 4, when the flotilla set off for Normandy, only to turn back due to bad weather. Obviously he was also aboard when they set off the next day, June 5.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>

Robert Capa, D-Day image captions, Contax 35mm Roll 4, annotated.<\/p><\/div>\n

2. Somewhere in there, most likely June 4-5, he made the pre-invasion images represented on those partial four rolls of 35mm film held in the ICP’s Capa Archive, along with the pre-invasion 120-film images and the 4x5s.<\/em><\/p>\n

3. On the morning of June 6, he made the eleven exposures on Omaha Beach.<\/em><\/p>\n

4. On the morning of June 7, he landed back in England and shipped all those films to you by courier, along with 4 sheets of handwritten caption notes, plus the note you’ve often cited to the effect that all the action was in the 35mm rolls. (Is that note among your papers? The ICP doesn’t have it.)<\/em><\/p>\n

5. In all of your many accounts to date, you’ve indicated that you’d heard nothing from Capa from the time he boarded the Chase till you got word on the 7th that these films were en route to you. So the 5-person darkroom staff was standing around waiting for them (though I gather David Scherman’s films came in sometime on the 6th and got processed). And you were in a state of high anxiety, as you had to get the complete D-Day coverage out to the NY office in the mailbag on the morning of the 8th. Hence the understandable rush and confusion in the darkroom when Capa’s films finally arrived, on the night of the 7th.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"LIFE<\/a>

LIFE magazine, June 19, 1944 issue, with Robert Capa’s D-Day images and official U. S. Army Photo of Gen. Eisenhower on cover.<\/p><\/div>\n

6. That deadline was absolute, in that the June 19th issue of <\/em>LIFE would actually hit the newsstands and go into the mail to subscribers on June 12 \u2014\u00a0so, once the films got to NY, the D-Day images had to get laid out, the captions and story written, the layouts to the printers, the issue printed and shipped, etc., in just a few days.<\/em> [N.B. The\u00a0<\/em>LIFE issue dated June 19 actually closed, editorially, on June 10, with the layouts rushed to the printers so that copies could get distributed the next week, days before the dateline.]<\/em><\/p>\n

7. In the <\/em>B&W interview and our Q&A as published at my blog<\/a>, you’ve agreed (in part due to Baughman’s analysis) that Capa most likely made only eleven exposures on Omaha Beach. If you received four (or more) rolls of 35mm film from him on the night of June 7, therefore, all the 35mm rolls aside from the one containing those eleven exposures had to contain images made before the landing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Do I have all that right? If not, would you correct my errors?<\/em><\/p>\n

The problem I have here involves fitting those 4 rolls of pre-invasion film into the timeline. Capa certainly wouldn’t have held them back and sent them to you on June 8th or thereafter, once he’d returned to Normandy; by then they’d be old news. He couldn’t have sent them to you before he left the Chase and headed to Omaha Beach, because you’d certainly have mentioned receiving a preliminary shipment from him in your various accounts.<\/em><\/p>\n

So the evidence \u2014\u00a0including your own narrative \u2014\u00a0seems to indicate that his pre-invasion films arrived along with his eleven Omaha Beach exposures, plus his 120-film negatives made on the way back from Omaha Beach and Normandy (the medics caring for the wounded and dead, etc.). Again, do I have all that right? If not, would you correct my errors?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>

Robert Capa, forged “ruined” D-Day negative on right, original on left (1)<\/p><\/div>\n

Unfortunately, I don’t have scans of the reconstructed contact sheets the ICP created of those four rolls of pre-invasion 35mm film that I can provide to you. But I can tell you that all of the nine remaining Omaha Beach negatives they have show a picture editor’s edge notches \u2014\u00a0most of them double notches \u2014\u00a0indicating instruction to the darkroom staff to “print this.” I assume you made one set of those notches, with the second made at the NY end. But none of the pre-invasion negatives show any edge-notching, suggesting that they never got printed.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is why I’m bewildered by your statement that “The <\/em>Life London darkroom printed off these negatives at the time, in the normal way.” When did they arrive? When did they get printed? Why are they not edge-notched? If they got shipped to <\/em>LIFE, when did they get shipped? Why did <\/em>LIFE run none of them?<\/em><\/p>\n

\""Beachheads<\/a>

“Beachheads of Normandy,” LIFE magazine feature on D-Day with Robert Capa photos, June 19, 1944.<\/p><\/div>\n

Whatever happened with Capa on Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6 does not in any way diminish my respect for him as a person and as a photographer. He achieved what he achieved in his life and work; it will stand the test of time. And whatever decisions you made under terrible pressure on the night of June 7 and the morning of June 8 \u2014\u00a0on his behalf, on <\/em>LIFE‘s behalf, and on your own \u2014\u00a0could not radically revise our field’s assessment of what you accomplished during your long and distinguished career. Certainly they could not now affect the esteem in which Capa and <\/em>LIFE are held.<\/em><\/p>\n

My intuition\u00a0 and the evidence\u00a0 suggest that there’s another version of this story waiting to be told \u2014\u00a0a more nuanced and complex one. Excepting you, everyone involved has passed away. In the end, I believe, our loyalty has to be to the truth, let the chips fall where they may.<\/em><\/p>\n

Best, Allan<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Morris has yet to reply to that email, and I won’t hold my breath. But that doesn’t mean it went unheeded, as subsequent events \u2014 which I’ll\u00a0explore in my next post \u2014 have shown.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

(For an index of links to all posts in this series,\u00a0click here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The recently published interview, “Rearview Mirror: John G. Morris: Normandy, 1944,” makes it clear that Morris no longer “stand[s] by [his] account of what happened in the London office of Life magazine on June 7, 1944 as first published in [his] book Get the Picture.” The research and evidence presented at this blog over the past six months have forced Morris to make significant revisions to and recantations of his narrative of the past 70 years re Capa’s D-Day pictures and their fate. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[788,945,946],"tags":[1021,939,840,938,917,1017,969,937,1016],"class_list":["post-23112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analog-photography-2","category-photo-history","category-photojournalism-2","tag-black-white-magazine","tag-d-day","tag-j-ross-baughman","tag-john-morris","tag-life-magazine","tag-mark-edward-harris","tag-richard-whelan","tag-robert-capa","tag-wilson-hicks","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}