Robert Capa & The D Day Negatives
On June 6, 1944 the war photographer Robert Capa landed with the first wave of soldiers at Omaha Beach on D Day. The photographs he took that day became some of the most famous of WWII, but came close to never being seen.
In the haste to meet the publishing deadline Capa only stayed on the beach briefly, before hopping back on a boat to London to get the photographs to Life Magazine.
Once there Capa is supposed to have give four rolls of film or 106 pictures to Life Magazine, who gave them to a young lab technician to develop. In the technician’s haste to develop the film though, he turned the dryers on too high causing the emulsion on the film to run.All but 11 of the negatives melted. These are the only surviving photographs we have of the first wave of D Day and are now known as the Magnificent Eleven.