Richard Whelan’s account of Capa’s D-Day films qualifies as neither competent research nor responsible historianship. It constitutes the desperate Hail Mary pass of the terminally compromised and corrupted hireling. A perfect illustration of the dilemma of the bespoke, in-house curator and historian in the employ of the subject, or his or her estate, or some other entity with a vested interest in the outcome of the research. […]
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The physical evidence proves inarguably that the persistent sprocket-hole intrusion in Capa’s exposures did not result from the mythical one-time “emulsion melt” in LIFE’s London darkroom, but instead represents a persistent minor malfunction in one of Capa’s two Contaxes. It is visible to the naked eye in dozens of Capa’s rolls of 35mm film from January 1944 onward. The fact that some rolls don’t show this suggests that they were made with his second Contax, which didn’t have this problem. It also indicates that no one at LIFE noticed or cared about this enough to advise Capa to get his camera checked and realigned. […] Robert Capa’s missing and supposedly destroyed D-Day negatives — the ones he shipped to London from Weymouth on the morning of June 7, the ones purportedly destroyed in a freak darkroom accident that night — sit today, intact and available for study, where they’ve sat for years: in the Robert Capa and Cornell Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography in New York. […] My investigation of the circumstances surrounding Robert Capa’s images of Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and the subsequent fate of his negatives, continues apace. I will publish some major findings at the end of this month. In the meantime, I’ll fill in some of the blanks in the story so far. I’ve taken […] |
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Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (14)
These negatives in the Capa Archive at the International Center of Photography constitute portions of the rolls sent by Robert Capa to John Morris, LIFE magazine’s London picture editor, upon docking at Weymouth, England on the morning of June 7 — in other words, they represent the negatives supposedly “ruined” in the demonstrably mythical darkroom mishap caused by the possibly mythical “darkroom lad” Dennis Banks. […]