The question becomes this: does the photo show LCI(L)-94 already retracting after its first landing? These two timelines argue that Capa landed first, and subsequently photographed LCI(L)-94 during its first approach to the beach. […]
The question becomes this: does the photo show LCI(L)-94 already retracting after its first landing? These two timelines argue that Capa landed first, and subsequently photographed LCI(L)-94 during its first approach to the beach. […] At this point there remains just one aspect of Capa’s D-Day adventure left to examine: his departure from Omaha Beach aboard LCI(L)-94 (which stands for Landing Craft Infantry (Large)-94). Let’s see how his description of this phase of his adventure stands up to scrutiny. […] Capa had transferred from LCI(L)-94 to the attack transport ship USS Samuel Chase (APA-26), and there he took at least one photo of LCI(L)-85 as it was moored alongside the Chase, transferring off wounded shortly before it sank. It seems Capa appropriated events that he had seen others experience, and wove them into his own story as though they had happened to him. […] We can date John Morris’s active involvement in generating the Capa D-Day myth to sometime during the summer or fall of 1954, when, as Executive Editor of Magnum Photos, he wrote the captions for a posthumous Capa portfolio that would appear in the 1955 edition of U.S. Camera Annual. […] In place of the established myth, with its enticing melodrama, I supplied an alternative tale with its own attractions, a complex skein of personal and interpersonal motivations: camaraderie, fear, failure, guilt, self-protection, white lies. No less rewarding, I’d like to think, just in a different way. […] |