Omaha Beach on D-Day

October 15, 2015
The first photographer on the beach on D-Day was Robert Capa (191354), a Hungarian Jewish refugee from Nazism who'd become an American. He shot four rolls, but only 10 images survived a drying error. Those pictures appear here, fittingly after an excellent documentary-comics account of the lead-up to Capa's D-Day, the day itself, and its immediate aftermath. From there, the narrative flashes forward midway through and at the end to Capa on the phone with a reporter preparing a tenth-anniversary article. Following both comics and the historic photos is an appreciative essay, interspersed with both portraits of him and examples of his own photographs, about Capa as a war photographer. Since Capa's work is the prototype for all subsequent battlefront visual reporting, placing the viewer in the midst of military action, mostly before, around, and after combat but also, of course, harrowingly under fire, it's high praise of Bertail that his black, white, and gray art, drawn with both pen and brush, ideally complements Capa's photojournalism.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)