Cynthia Young has a bad habit that’s fatal to credible scholarship: By dint of her position as the de facto world’s foremost Capa authority, she considers herself entitled to simply make up shit like this. […]
Cynthia Young has a bad habit that’s fatal to credible scholarship: By dint of her position as the de facto world’s foremost Capa authority, she considers herself entitled to simply make up shit like this. […] By energetically promulgating the Capa D-Day myth, disregarding contrary evidence in its own holdings, obstructing independent research about Capa, and falsely claiming not to possess key archival materials that it has held for years (among other sins), ICP has besmirched its reputation as a responsible repository and a credible research institution. […] The myth of Robert Capa’s D-Day, as publicly initiated by Capa himself, constitutes a classic example of the form of fraud referred to disdainfully by those in the military as “stolen valor.” […] So TIME/LIFE has made a slow-motion but dramatic about-face, going from studiously ignoring the myth of the London darkroom disaster at its public birthing in Charles Wertenbaker’s 1944 book and Capa’s certifying it in his 1947 memoir to enthusiastically promulgating it seven decades later. […] |