The Capa D Day saga continue with the first of a series of responses by A D Coleman to a remarkable statement The A. D. Coleman Attack by John G Morris, which he concludes with the words ‘We may never know the entire truth‘. Reading it through I get the feeling of a man who has rather lost touch with reality and is unable to understand much of the research that Coleman and others have put into this and very much wants to make sure the truth remains hidden.
Morris, who was 98 in December, claims to have remembered facts that he had clearly forgotten back in 1944 when he first gave the now disproved legend of the films ruined in processing by ‘the young darkroom assistant‘ Dennis Banks. He now claims that these ‘ruined’ rolls, which seem almost certain to have been pre-invasion images by Capa, were actually blank rolls of film, and, if I understand him, that Capa in his agitated state had been unable to remember which of the films he was carrying he had actually put into his Contax and exposed.
Morris’s newly remembered story also includes a mysterious mid-channel rendezvous between Capa and another Life photographer, Dave Scherman, which had brought Capa’s earlier films to London with him before the D-Day pictures. It’s an element of the story that Coleman demolishes with a sledgehammer in his first response, most of which is employed in pointing out places where Morris misrepresents (or completely misunderstands) aspects of what Coleman and others have written.
Capa was a professional photographer, and I think Morris is questioning his professionalism. I can’t believe he will not have had a foolproof system to distinguish exposed and unexposed film, probably involving either tearing off the film end on unloading or rewinding inside the cassette and then storing it in a different container. I wasn’t taking pictures in the 1940s, so I’m not sure exactly how they would have done it then, but some method was surely a part of every film photographers basic training?
Then the mysterious ‘young darkroom technician’, presumably either working under the supervision of someone more senior or else someone experienced in film developing despite his youth. You don’t just pull any guy off the street to work in the Life darkroom. I can’t believe that any darkroom technician, even the greenest, would not recognise a completely unexposed film when he pulled it out of the fixer and put it to wash. Morris perhaps would not; he appears to be proud of his lack of knowledge in this area, claiming ‘I have never developed a roll of film in my entire life.’ It’s one statement in his piece I find entirely believable.
It is mysterious too that Dennis Banks appears to be unknown to anyone (and there does still appear to be some confusion about his name.) Inventing another story about him doesn’t help. Morris adds yet another with the suggestion he makes about the younger man “I presume he is long gone.” Why so, when at the time he – if he existed – was said to be 17 and Morris was ten years older?
And had Capa’s preparations for D-Day rolls arrived along with Scherman’s, who can believe that none of his pictures would have been considered for publication, not even have been edited as Morris suggests. Would any editor presented with pictures by two of his small team of photographers take a look at only one of them, find a few pictures he could use and not even bother to edit those taken by a rather better-known photographer?
We may well never know the entire truth – and I think Morris is determined to try and stop us doing so. We can only speculate on why this is, but we do now have a much better idea about what actually happened on Omaha beach – and afterwards than we did before the work of J Ross Baughman and A D Coleman.
I don’t think having a more truthful account in the slightest detracts from the pictures or from my respect for Capa as a photographer, though it perhaps makes him a little more human. His reaction to the situation is entirely understandable and probably saved his life, and the underexposure and camera shake gave his images an added drama. Capa was a gambler and we are richer because he had a bit of luck and knew when it was time to leave the game – even though he had only taken perhaps ten pictures.
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