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Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (52b)

In the end, it seems fittingly ironic that the Occam’s-Razor explanation for all of Capa’s missing D-Day negatives turns out to be the scissors of the censor. The legend of the lost negatives resulted from nothing more or less than the needs of Capa’s outsize ego. […]

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (52a)

I have come to believe that Capa’s actions on D-Day resulted from considered planning and calculated risks. He knew that he would have only a short time on the beach. He knew that he had to get back quickly to some ship — preferably the Chase, but if not another — in the convoy scheduled to depart at noon for the English coast. That represented his only hope of getting his films to LIFE on time. […]

Martha Madigan (1950-2022): A Farewell (2)

Those core issues — the brevity of life, the spiral of time, the constancy of change, the cyclic aspects of history and human experience, and the enduring, unbreakable connection between humans and the natural world — weave constantly through Martha Madigan’s commentary on her own work and working method, and make themselves apparent in the work itself. […]

Martha Madigan (1950-2022): A Farewell (1)

Martha Madigan has worked almost exclusively with the photogram for the past three decades, patiently building up an extensive, interconnected body of work that has evolved into one of the most coherent and durable considerations of the photogram in the medium’s history. […]

Misha Gordin: Reflex of Freedom (2007)

Gordin refers to his approach as “conceptual photography,” though by this he obviously means something much different from the haphazardly made, often amateurish or deliberately casual imagery generated as documentation of performances by conceptual artists since the 1970s. Carefully planned and meticulously crafted, Gordin’s images are previsualized as sketches on paper, which he then stages for the production of the negatives necessary to actualize the imagined image. […]