The “darkroom mishap” story occupies a large volume of Clan Coleman’s vituperative criticism of Capa and Morris. The basic story goes like this, with slight variations over the years.
John Morris, Life magazine’s European picture editor in London, and his colleagues waited anxiously for Capa’s film to arrive after D-Day. Other Life photographers would be sending back film, but Capa’s figure prominently in these tellings.
The film finally arrived at the Life offices at 2100 – 9pm the day after D-Day – and Morris immediately ordered his darkroom staff to process the film as quickly as possible. Morris had an absolute deadline by which he had to send the film to New York for publication.
In addition to other film that Capa exposed before and after the invasion while on the Chase – pictures of men on the ship and possible pictures of the armada – Morris would have received the roll of 35mm film from Contax A and the "ruined" roll from Contax B. Capa included a note that read, "Film like everything got wett by landing." [sic] He had protected Contax A, so the only film that could have gotten wet was the roll from Contax B that he removed on the beach when he changed his film, that got wet in is pocket or camera bag when he waded out to the LCI. Capa may have included two more unexposed but soaked rolls.
While Morris waited, a senior darkroom technician, Hans Wild, called Morris from the darkroom to tell him the pictures were “fabulous.” Subsequently, an adolescent darkroom assistant, Dennis Banks, ran into Morris’ office, informing him that almost all of the negatives had been ruined. The “darkroom lad” explained that, to hasten the drying of the negatives under this deadline pressure, he had placed them in a cabinet and turned up a heating coil. He apparently concluded that this overheated the negatives causing the emulsion to melt and ruin the film, ruining all but 10 images. Morris, who rushed to inspect the film, said the negatives looked like "grey mud."(27)
AI-generated image of Dennis Banks trying to understand how Robert Capa’s film was ruined right after Hans Wild said it was fabulous. That sick moment when he realized he had messed up, big time!
AI-generated image of John Morris examining the only useable images on one roll of Robert Capa’s film from Omaha Beach. Anxious Life magazine employees surround him.
Coleman et al., dispute the claim that heat could damage the film, which is the basis for their conclusion that Capa and/or Morris fabricated the story to cover for Capa’s lack of production that morning. Tristan Da Cunha effectively has refuted the story. Da Cunha subjected exposed period black and white film in a vintage Contax II camera, as well as exposed modern film, to high temperatures while drying. The emulsion remained stable and did not melt or run in any of their experiments.(28) .
The darkroom mishap story raises many questions, the first being, how did they go from fabulous to ruined in minutes? As Coleman said, "I find it implausible that Morris would receive those precious, anxiously awaited, historic, irreplaceable four rolls of film by Capa...only to turn them over to a 15-year-old-lab assistant for developing." To understand what actually happened requires a little bit of darkroom knowledge.
The film that Capa used that day, Super-XX, was a panchromatic film, meaning it was sensitive to all wavelengths of visible light. Photographic paper, by contrast, is orthochromatic, meaning it is not sensitive to red light, which is why prints can be processed in a darkroom under red light. But this would ruin a roll of panchromatic film. The film had to be processed in complete darkness.
In a completely dark room, the technician opens the cannister of film by popping off one end, then pulls out the spool holding the film that is wound around it. The technician then feeds the film onto another larger spool that allows for spaces between each layer of film so that it can be bathed in developing chemicals. The film is wound onto this developing spool starting with the first frame on the roll, which means the last frames comprise the outer layer. Capa’s surviving images, at the end of roll A, would have been present on that outer layer on the spool.
This spool, and any others, are then placed into a light-tight developing tank, into which the developing chemicals are placed for specific times at particular temperatures to produce useable negatives.
However, given the vicissitudes of producing photographs in combat conditions, it was not uncommon to peek at the film prior to halting development. For example, if film had been underexposed, it might need a longer time in the developer. W. Eugene Smith did this commonly.
Development is then stopped, often with water or even vinegar, and excess silver ions are “fixed” out of the emulsion while leaving the reduced metallic silver grains on the film with the third bath, fixer. Finally, the film is rinsed thoroughly before hanging it to dry.
As Coleman emphatically states, it doesn’t make sense that processing the film would be left in the hands of a teenaged lad, but there is nothing in Morris’ story to indicate that it was. I believe the development was handled by Hans Wild. It is entirely plausible that Wild peeked at the roll from Contax A toward the end of development, saw the last images on the outer layer of the spool, finished the processing, put the film in the sink to wash, and notified the anxious Morris that the pictures were fabulous. When it was fully rinsed, which takes about ten minutes, he probably told Banks to finish it, saying something like, “Hey, kid, stick those negs in the dryer and add some heat. We’ve got a deadline to meet!”
Banks could have been trusted to hang the film to dry. This is exactly the type of duty an inexperienced "darkroom lad" would be expected to do. Wild was probably busy processing all the film that arrived by courier that night and making contact sheets for the censors, despite Coleman’s claim that they were all just sitting around with nothing to do, twiddling their thumbs. In fact, I imagine the London Life office was very hectic during one of the greatest battles of the history of the world. It’s ludicrous to think it was anything other than utter chaos.*
At some point, Banks would have seen that the emulsion on the roll from Contax B contained illegible images, and quite possibly assumed he did it by overheating. After all, it went from fabulous to ruined with the hot cabinet as the only variable. Banks probably showed the film to Wild, who realized the catastrophic magnitude of this blunder, and probably told him that he had to tell the boss.
The Clan, who predetermined that an incompetent, cowardly, conniving Capa blew it at Omaha Beach, contend that Capa fabricated this darkroom mishap story to cover for his timid failure on D-Day. They claim that he concocted the story to make him and Morris look heroic.
Herrick claimed, “The last thing he [Capa] would have wanted was for the complete set of his D-Day pictures to surface… None of the many shots he claimed to have taken at the shingle would have turned up, because he never reached that point and invented that incident.” (31) This assertion is pure speculation without foundation.
But, it begs the question, how did roll B get ruined?
* Herrick has shown that Morris omitted a key aspect regarding the handling of film from correspondents.(29,30) E.K. Butler explained the process in Editor and Publisher magazine, 1944, Volume 77, Issue 47, page 16. All film had to be managed by the Ministry of Information censors. Couriers brought the film to the MOI, not directly to the magazine offices. It was logged in before it was couriered to the appropriate outlet, such as Life magazine offices, for processing.
After developing the film, the technicians printed contact sheets and prints, which were returned to the MOI for inspection during the day. At night, finished prints were returned to the MOI as radio prints. Censors retained any material deemed secret, then returned the remaining film to the magazine for editing and publication. That’s a lot oftechnical detail that would distract from the main story, which I imagine is why Morris usually omitted it.
27. https://www.nearbycafe.com/artandphoto/photocritic/2015/02/12/alternate-history-robert-capa-on-d-day-21/
28. https://tdacunha.com/robert-capa/
29. Herrick, p. 245
31. Herrick, p. 269