[dsmithhfx]

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day ? exposure magazine ? Medium

[Caver]

Very interesting article, thanks for sharing!

[swanlefitte]

Alternate History: Robert Capa on D-Day ? exposure magazine ? Medium

Interesting read about how Capa was built into a hero he wasn't. It wouldn't surprise me if it's correct.

[Dartmoor Dave]

Alternate history? Now how the heck would that work? One history one moment, then a change to another history, then back to the first history again? Alternative history I could understand; there's a lot of that around these days. But alternate?

As for Capa on D-Day: it was the usual thing during the war to report stories in a way that made everyone seem even more heroic than they actually were. Propaganda value was far more important than the literal truth, and Robert Capa was most definitely the sort of guy who would embroider a tale more with each retelling. Whatever the exact details might or might not have been, the guy did go ashore on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and he came back with photos, and he went into that hell voluntarily when he had been offered a much safer viewpoint from a command vessel instead.

[CarlJF]

Interesting read about how Capa was built into a hero he wasn't. It wouldn't surprise me if it's correct.

I wouldn't be surprised either. It look way more probable that the guy just freaked out after a few shots and got back ASAP on a return ship than the doubtful official story as to why only 11 shots were recovered.

The story behind "Fallen Soldiers" has also been debunked beyond all doubt as false, the picture itself being more than probably a staged one. So, it would not be the first time a story behind one of Capa's picture been somewhat "embelished"...

[savoche]

Indeed interesting. If the author is correct it wouldn't be the only time Capa was less than truthful. His The Falling Soldier is without much doubt, I believe, a staged photo presented as being a real battle scene.

[swanlefitte]

Alternate history? In sports an alternate is a sub for the first. I think alternative history would be that of another world.
The movie Rashomon is the telling of an event from 4 perspectives. Each is based on the ego of the teller. We have one view, that of the Capa PR machine here and now some scepticism.
It does make me wonder about Capa and how I would handle it.

[Wasp]

The original story could have been war propaganda. Who knows?

As the years went by, it suited Capa to stick to the published version.

I always thought that it was an incredible story. Brave photographer risks life, limb and equipment under fire to bring back pictures to a waiting world. It all comes apart when some over eager klutz to ruin the negatives. Luckily a few precious shots were saved. They were grainy because of the mishap in the darkroom. The world can only wonder at the the horrors of war that were captured and then forever lost.

Now the reality turns to be a bit different. Capa gets lucky and lands under light fire. He takes some shots that show the action but then his nerves kick in and he catches a boat home. The pictures are good but not epic as expected. The grain is just the film state of the art of the time. Could also be due to extreme cropping. So a story gets concocted about the not so great image quality and the ones that got away. In the process a reputation/myth is built.

[swanlefitte]

And friendly fire/collateral damage, the engineers bravely being killed become hiding infantry. Prop up a hero but to do it deny the heroism of an entire class of military.

[stevebrot]

I chuckled a little in regards to the matter of the sprocket holes and potential for film mis-load. I have a Soviet-made Kiev (Contax II copy) and it suffers from the same deficiency. The cartridge spool must have an indent on its end to match the centering index collar around the rewind pawl on the body. The Contax II manual calls out this requirement in plain text and it is a surprise that a photographer familiar with their gear might attempt to load from an incompatible cartridge. A film jam at mid-roll is quite possible unless modification is made to the take-up reel to allow for the offset.


Steve

[tuco]

I saw a D-Day war documentary where they interviewed a surviving German soldier who operated a machine gun post that was trained on the first landing craft at Omaha Beach. He said he thinks he killed almost a thousand people that day. How would like to live with that.

[monochrome]

I imagine there was a considerable amount of journalistic embroidery of the truth in WWII reportage. My father landed on Normandy in one of the first day waves, and though he didn't talk much about the war, he did say the facts were by necessity romanticized for home consumption.

[MarkJerling]

I've had a request to merge the two threads discussing this link. Hope that does not cause too much confusion!

[clackers]

Yes, very interesting article.

Out of fairness, I think it should have mentioned that even if he did run from Normandy and cover it up, he faced war again in 1948 and died while with soldiers in Vietnam in 1954 … he shouldn't be remembered simply as a coward!

[Rondec]

I think it is human tendency to try to put the most positive spin on things we can and over time memories probably do shift.

Malcolm Gladwell did a podcast called "A Polite Word for Liar" that discussed the foibles of memory. Regardless, it was fairly brave for a man armed with just a camera to go to Omaha Beach, even for just a half hour.