Photographers on Photography: The D-Day Landing and Robert Capa's Slightly Out of Focus Legacy

Photographers on Photography: The D-Day Landing and Robert Capa's Slightly Out of Focus Legacy "It's not easy always to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the suffering around one. "The rip tide hit my body and every wave slapped my face under my helmet. In his short life, Robert Capa covered five wars and when he died in 1954, he was in the combat zone covering the end of the France's war in Indochina; a war that was soon to become America's. Capa had first photographed war in 1936 when he, like Ernest Hemingway and so many others, was drawn to the Spanish Civil War, the first conflict with European fascism. While there has been some controversy over its authenticity, few deny its impact. My friend Milt Felsen was an ambulance driver in Spain with the volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. "I crawled on my stomach over to my friend Larry the Irish padre of the regiment…hell he growled…comforted by religion, I took out my Contax camera and began to shoot without raising my head. ". Over Capa's head, a fresh faced kid from Brooklyn jumped into the flack-filled, cloud-muddied skies. He made it to the ground, fought his way halfway to Berlin and returned home safely. The faulty drying too had somehow added a special quality to them, one that lifts them out of that specific time and place, making them universal images of war. Sixty-eight years ago, on June 6, 1944, the Hungarian born photographer Robert Capa waded ashore on the beaches of Normandy with two Contax cameras wrapped in oilskins tucked into the folds of his jacket. "It was still very early and very gray for good pictures, but the gray water and the gray sky made the men, dodging under the surrealistic designs of Hitler's anti-invasion brain trust, very effective. That D-Day morning he was close enough. "The water was cold and the beach still a hundred yards away. A soldier got there at the same time, and for a few minutes we shared its cover. But when I'd meet him in Madrid, he was always dressed to the nines and I never saw him without a pretty mam'selle on his arm. He was a good man. Capa famously said that, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough. Making his way across the bloody deck, he reached the engine room and dried his hands by the engine's warmth. After putting his film in a press bag and sending it by courier for processing, he changed his clothes and returned to the beaches of Normandy on the first available boat. A week later, he learned that the images he had taken were considered the best images anyone had made of the invasion. Many publications added a caption to these photos, to explain to readers why they were blurred and slightly out of focus. . Out of the one hundred and six images Capa had taken only eight survived. I reached into my bag for a brand new roll, and my wet, shaking hands ruined the roll before I could insert it in my camera. "I paused for a moment…and then I had it bad. Capa reached the landing craft, but as he hauled himself on board, there was an explosion that covered him in blood and feathers. Yet, when those few photos were published around the world, they caused a sensation. Photographers on Photography: The D-Day Landing and Robert Capa's Slightly Out of Focus Legacy Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 10/06/2012