This must be old news to most of you guys, but.....I always wondered why there were "so few" D-Day photos from Omaha. I just figured it was a matter of staying alive.....and that he stopped shooting while he still owned the life of Robert Capa. But that was not the case at all.....90% of the film, in his haste to see these historic pictures, was ruined by the Film Lab Tech. Jesus...can you imagine.? I wonder how that conversation went.?
I could look it up, but......11 out of approximately 106 is all that survived. He was a bit of a sad story, but also a Very Fascinating story. Kind of a "Mans Man"...he would go on to found Magnum, and associate with some rather famous people. Not bad for an migrant. His "wife" would die in battle in Spain....Then Bob would die covering The Vietnam War, and his close friend David Seymour would be killed during war in .....Egypt.? Those guys did a lot of living. My life Pales By Comparison.
It's a famous, legendary story. The photos were ruined, but on the other hand, the blurry effect on those frames which survived lent immediacy to the well-known shot of the GI clinging to a piece of 'Rommel's Asparagus' in the shallow water.....
Yeah.....Sorry. I, kind of, knew I would be walking a well worn trail with this, but.....it was so new To Me, that I just could not resist bringing it up again (no doubt). Thanks
Without looking it up, I believe that he lost some of the film that he snapped, and most of what he returned with was ruined during the development stage. Also, after taking those pix he jumped into a landing craft that had just put men on the beach and called it a day. If that was so, I can't say that I could blame him on that move. That's not exactly what I would call a good day at the beach. He did do more than super he-man Earnest Hemingway on D-Day though.
The Capa story is fascinating and also sad in many ways. The 'standard'biography is 'Robert Capa' by Richard Whelan ( published 1985 ) and is well worth reading for anyone interested.
The story is that an Army photo tech in a hurry to rush the development process along turned up the heat on the film dryer, melting the emulsion. I know that it can be done. I used to develop color and b&w film. I think he told the story in his book, Slightly Out of Focus. I bet that guy got to France before the rest of his unit. A stranger story is about the guy that supposedly filmed the Omaha landing from a "beach" position.
