{"id":40957,"date":"2020-06-06T01:23:16","date_gmt":"2020-06-06T05:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/?p=40957"},"modified":"2020-11-03T08:59:53","modified_gmt":"2020-11-03T13:59:53","slug":"alternate-history-robert-capa-on-d-day-46","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nearbycafe.com\/artandphoto\/photocritic\/2020\/06\/06\/alternate-history-robert-capa-on-d-day-46\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (46)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A.<\/a>Today marks the 76th anniversary of D-Day, not likely to get much attention elsewhere than here. Seems like an appropriate moment for an update on the Capa D-Day project. [Update, 12:15 p.m.: Capa’s D-Day image “The Face in the Surf” just showed up in a Lincoln Project anti-Trump ad titled “Leadership.”<\/a> \u2014 A.D.C.]<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Due to the lockdown that COVID-19 has required, research institutions nationwide have closed their doors until further notice.<\/p>\n

Hence my plans to spend time this year pursuing this project at the International Center of Photography’s Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archives in New Jersey, at the University of Chicago Library (which houses the papers of John G. Morris), and at the New-York Historical Society (which has the LIFE<\/em> magazine archives, except for its picture files), have gone on indefinite hold.<\/p>\n

I don’t expect to find in any of those repositories anything that would substantially challenge or change the version of the Capa D-Day story that this team has established through painstaking research over the past six years \u2014 though of course we’re always open to disproof of our reasoned conclusions. I should add that all the institutions that colluded over the decades in creating and disseminating the Capa D-Day myth \u2014 ICP, Magnum Photo, Time\/Life, Inc. \u2014 continue to remain silent in relation to our research; none of the individuals involved (John Morris while he was alive, Cynthia Young at ICP) offered any contrary evidence; and none of those who question our conclusions have put forward any persuasive argument for either the original narrative initiated by Capa or any of its subsequent elaborations by Morris, Young, Capa biographer Richard Whelan, and others.<\/p>\n

More probably, then, when I do get to access those primary research materials I will either find corroboration of the results of our investigation to date or, possibly, nothing relevant. Nonetheless, the imperatives of both scholarship and journalism \u2014 equal parts of which underpin this project \u2014 obligate me to delve into those resources and incorporate any pertinent findings into my final account of our work.<\/p>\n

Since I can’t do that, I will turn my attention instead to the following:<\/p>\n