Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day

[Michael Markey]

I`m afraid that I`m getting rather cynical about these outrage posts.
The seem designed, more often than not , to drive traffic to an external web site.
I don`t pretend to know how these things work.

I remember the outrage post about Ralph Gleason going digital.
Went on for pages ... many high horses were mounted in the process and much rubbish spoken.

The poster admitted that it was in part to attract traffic to a blog.

 

[Harry Lime]

Wasn't Bob Landry in the first wave as well that day? He lost all his film and his shoes as I recall.

I am aware of one other photographer, but they do not appear to have left the landing craft they were on. There is a famous shot taken from the steering house looking down the bow of the landing craft and through the open front you see a building in the distance with soldiers departing the craft. But I'm not sure if that picture was taken in the first wave.

Capa was the only Allied photographer to actually set foot on the beach that morning during the initial landing.

 

[Sparrow]

I am aware of one other photographer, but they do not appear to have left the landing craft they were on. There is a famous shot taken from the steering house looking down the bow of the landing craft and through the open front you see a building in the distance with soldiers departing the craft. But I'm not sure if that picture was taken in the first wave.

Capa was the only Allied photographer to actually set foot on the beach that morning during the initial landing.

... and in probably one of the worst places.

 

[Highway 61]

I remember the outrage post about Ralph Gleason going digital.

Who's he ?

 

[Pioneer]

First, I did read all the installments and it did not provide much more credible evidence that there was a conspiracy between Capa, his picture editor, or anyone else.

Second, as one poster has already mentioned, the writing and presentation of information was not particularly well done. "Amateurish" was the word.

Third, Capa did bring back several usable exposures. Whether or not they were blurry because they were melted in a drying cabinet or from shaky hands is immaterial to me. He was actually there. Considering the conditions under which the photographs were taken, camera held over his head to protect it from the sea water, bullets flying by his head as he took cover anywhere he could, it is truly amazing anything came back from the front at all.

But, rather than respect what was accomplished it seems we have this need instead to tear down the reputations of anyone who actually did something. I very strongly suspect that this writer would never have even made it as far as England, let alone climbed on a boat headed for the front.

I am personally getting very tired of this trend, if trend it really is. This, in my opinon, is where the internet falls flat on it face. People can blog and write any garbage they want, and there are no editors as a gateway to critique and prevent it from being published.

 

[aizan]

i wouldn't call spending "only" 30min on omaha beach cowardly, but overexposing all of those negs would definitely be amateurish for a war photographer. it's a good thing the important photos were not overexposed, though.

afaic, morris was looking out for capa in a situation where other people would have been upset and would not have been understanding. that's alright with me. capa still deserved to get the staff position at life.

 

[Michael Markey]

Who's he ?

Duh ... sorry Gibson 😱

 

[Highway 61]

I am personally getting very tired of this trend, if trend it really is. This, in my opinon, is where the internet falls flat on it face. People can blog and write any garbage they want, and there are no editors as a gateway to critique and prevent it from being published.

Remarkable paragraph. Thanks for having written it.

Duh ... sorry Gibson 😱

I had got it. 😉

i wouldn't call spending "only" 30min on omaha beach cowardly, but overexposing all of those negs would definitely be amateurish for a war photographer. it's a good thing the important photos were not overexposed, though.

Anyone thinking that overexposing pictures is an easy mistake when using a Contax II doesn't know what he's talking about. I have restored several Contax II cameras and still own (and use) one of them. If there is something you just canNOT do while using a Contax II under hot circumstances, this is setting the shutter speeds selector on the slow speeds by mistake... 🙄

 

[Sparrow]

First, I did read all the installments and it did not provide much more credible evidence that there was a conspiracy between Capa, his picture editor, or anyone else.

Second, as one poster has already mentioned, the writing and presentation of information was not particularly well done. "Amateurish" was the word.

Third, Capa did bring back several usable exposures. Whether or not they were blurry because they were melted in a drying cabinet or from shaky hands is immaterial to me. He was actually there. Considering the conditions under which the photographs were taken, camera held over his head to protect it from the sea water, bullets flying by his head as he took cover anywhere he could, it is truly amazing anything came back from the front at all.

But, rather than respect what was accomplished it seems we have this need instead to tear down the reputations of anyone who actually did something. I very strongly suspect that this writer would never have even made it as far as England, let alone climbed on a boat headed for the front.

I am personally getting very tired of this trend, if trend it really is. This, in my opinon, is where the internet falls flat on it face. People can blog and write any garbage they want, and there are no editors as a gateway to critique and prevent it from being published.

... well said sir

 

[kbg32]

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/06/photographer-robert-capa-d-day

"Bullets tore into the water around me,” Capa wrote. The beach was 100 yards away, and the steel barriers rose like the remains of a ghostly city in a mist. Capa ran through a barrage of shells with his Contax and waited behind the nearest steel obstacle. “It was still very early and very gray for good pictures, but the little men dodging under the surrealistic designs . . . very effective,” Capa wrote. He clung to the pole, his hands shaking, shooting picture after picture. In front of him, on the beach, rose a half-burned amphibious tank. Capa dropped his Burberry raincoat into the water and made for the tank. All around him bodies floated in a sea of blood and vomit. It was not possible to retrieve the dead, and the living were unable to advance. Crawling on his stomach, he joined two friends, an Irish priest and a Jewish medic, and then began to shoot with his second Contax. “The foreground of my pictures was filled with wet boots and green faces,” he wrote.

Suddenly, from the boil of the red ocean, Capa caught the face of a young, helmeted soldier under fire, manning his position half submerged, with the eerie towers of German obstacles behind him. Capa raised his camera and caught what would emerge from Omaha Beach as arguably the iconic image of the war. “I didn’t dare to take my eyes off the finder of my Contax and frantically shot frame after frame.” Then his camera jammed. In front of Capa, hundreds of men were screaming and dying, body parts flying everywhere. Sam Fuller, on the landing boat behind Capa, temporarily lost his hearing from the noise. In his memoir he describes Capa taking out a telephoto lens to shoot a German officer on the hill with his hands on his hips, shouting orders."

 

[Sparrow]

... and before The falling Man joins the conversation Capa made no claims about it until months after the event, he said he took the photo with the camera held over his head and was only aware of its existence ... and significance much later

oh! ... and in a war it is really easy not to know where one is, the fact that the photo's location is a few miles from where Capa thought it was is also irrelevant

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Capa was the only Allied photographer to actually set foot on the beach that morning during the initial landing.

The only accredited civilian photographer.
I know that at the American landing zones some Signal Company photographers and cameramen went in as well, though not a 100% sure if that was with the actual first waves (Will do some research on this).
But all their material taken during that morning was lost during a ship-to-ship transfer.. 🙁

That's why most of the images and footage we know of D-Day is from several hours into the whole operation.

Captain Herman Wall of the 165th Signal Photo Company was severly wounded in the leg, but refused to give up his Leica camera before being operated on aboard a hospital ship in the channel.

 

[xayraa33]

Who's he ?

That was Jackie's younger brother, the skinny tee-totaler with no sense of humour.

I think he meant Ralph Gibson.

 

[mfunnell]

I'm as convinced by this as I am by the argument that the works of William Shakespeare were written by another person of the same name who, quite coincidently, was also from Stratford but was not a well-known playwright - or otherwise unacceptably middle-class.

...Mike

 

[leicapixie]

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143162

http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=143162

I have no interest in reading Ad Coleman.
A has been, a useless critic and pontificate.
He wrote a long time ago in one magazine, some newspapers.
Those who critic have no idea about photography.
Has anyone here read Coleman in the last 30~40 years..?

Like many who cannot do, find time to smear a reputation.
It's the same Hoohah finding Cartier-Bresson,Ansel Adams, etc., was just "so-so".
Technology and time has changed..
What was once almost impossible, now is a push of a button,
after a luxurious ride.
Look at Capa's images.
There are a number of books.
Coleman should rather go to Vietnam and examine a mine field to see if Capa, really died..

 

[james nicol]

Friedmann brothers

Friedmann brothers

the Friedmann brothers are less than meets the eye. photography as self promoting egotists . Coleman knows what he is saying

 

[Sparrow]

the Friedmann brothers are less than meets the eye. photography as self promoting egotists . Coleman knows what he is saying

... an interesting opinion given Mr Coleman's lack of technical understanding and bizarre conspiratorial bias to the known facts ... how were you convinced?

 

[Fred R.]

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day (10)
How to Make History (Not)

http://www.nearbycafe.com/artandphoto/photocritic/2014/07/06/alternate-history-robert-capa-on-d-day-10/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PhotocriticInternational+%28Photocritic+International%29[/url]

 

[Sparrow]

The same obsessive, delusional twaddle

 

[VinceC]

None of the discussion has emphasized the importance and difficulty of keeping the cameras and film dry under those conditions. Plastic freezer bags didn't exist back then. Also, once the photographer thinks/knows he nailed the shot, his top priority in the pre-digital days was to get the film to the lab.