THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 12, 1994 TAG: 9406100092
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Teresa Annas
DATELINE: 940612 LENGTH: Long
Capa (1913-1954) shot the most famous photographs of D-Day and its aftermath. The pictures are evidence of his oft-quoted statement, which constitutes his modus operandi:
{REST} ``If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.''
Some 40 of Capa's photos from that fateful summer in France are on view through July 10 at New York City's International Center of Photography (ICP) Midtown. Nine of these pictures captured the first and most vulnerable group of soldiers as they stormed the shore.
The pictures are in the permanent collection of ICP, which was founded in 1974 by his brother Cornell Capa, also a photojournalist. ICP's mission includes preserving Robert Capa's work and encouraging what has come to be known as ``concerned photography.''
Not that Robert Capa thought of himself as any kind of hero.
A 1964 book of his photographs, ``Images of War: Robert Capa,'' includes the photographer's own accounts of time spent in the field, from the Spanish Civil War to the war in Indochina between the French and Vietnamese.
Of his D-Day experience, Capa wrote:
``I would say that the war correspondent gets more drinks, more girls, better pay, and greater freedom than the soldier, but that at this stage of the game, having the freedom to choose his spot and being allowed to be a coward and not be executed for it is his torture. The war correspondent has his stake - his life - in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute.
``I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave.''
Capa woke before dawn on June 6, 1944, with the fear-stricken boys on the USS Chase. He rode with the green-faced crew in a barge across a choppy English Channel toward the shores of his beloved France.
As the barge front was lowered toward Omaha Beach, Capa stood on the gangplank to take his first pictures. He focused on the guys, venturing waist-deep in icy waters, rifles at ready, moving toward a thin sandy line sandwiched between sea and smoke.
The early hour made for very gray and grainy pictures. The images of men in a frothy ocean are slightly blurred, expounding on the emotion of the moment.
Of these pictures, an especially well-known one shows a soldier lying down in the surf, dodging German fire. We see his face, jaw jutted in determination. In the background are treacherous steel barricades, meant to keep American boats from landing.
Then Capa jumped in. About 75 yards from shore, Capa hid behind a barricade to shoot pictures of nearby soldiers. Moving 50 yards farther, a half-burnt amphibious tank became his next shooting shelter.
The tide rose fast. Water lapped at Capa's breast pocket where a last letter to his family was stashed. He prepared for his final dash to shore.
``Now the Germans played on all their instruments and I could not find any hole between the shells and bullets that blocked the last 25 yards to the beach,'' he wrote.
He ran close on the heels of two men, then threw himself flat on the beach. He pulled out his Contax camera and began to shoot without raising his head.
From the air, the beach ``must have looked like an open tin of sardines. Shooting from the sardine's angle, the foreground of my pictures was filled with wet boots and green faces. Above the boots and faces, my picture frames were filled with shrapnel smoke; burnt tanks and sinking barges formed my background.''
The tide rose further, pushing the men toward a barbed-wire fence, making them easy targets. He finished his roll of film with pictures of the first men who had the guts to stand on the beach.
His wet, shaking hands couldn't manage to insert a new roll. ``It was a new kind of fear shaking my body from toe to hair, and twisting my face.''
Without thinking, he stood up and ran to a medics boat, which was covered in feathers from the torn down jackets of blown-up men. He motored away with a bawling skipper.
Soon after, he put down his camera to help lift stretchers of wounded men.
Later that day, he rushed the film to Life magazine's London office. Unfortunately, all but 11 of 72 pictures he shot that morning were ruined by a darkroom technician.
Yet the nine of those 11 at ICP vividly convey the D-Day story - courage in spite of terror.
Capa stayed in France a few months, following the action as the Allied forces moved across Normandy.
One of the most charming pictures shows a French farmer offering American soldiers a sip of cider. Exuberant joy leaps off the prints portraying the late August liberation of Paris. That joy reverts to fear when snipers open fire on parading Parisians.
Capa was quite aware of the dangers of his line of work. A woman he loved - Gerda Taro, a journalist he worked with during the Spanish Civil War - was crushed to death by a tank.
Capa also died on the job. On May 25, 1954, he stepped on a land mine in Hanoi. He was the first American correspondent killed in Indochina.
``Capa's work is itself the picture of a great heart and an overwhelming compassion,'' wrote author John Steinbeck of his friend. ``No one can take his place.''
by CNB