Ben Fredericson Blog

How I started photography as a hobby is one of my fallback ideas in case I don’t get enough content for a proper weekly blog post. Sorry, next week maybe.

In 2004, on the 6th June, the yearly anniversary of the Allied landing in France (D-Day) was celebrated for the 60th time. It was a very big event around the world (yes, even in Germany, specially in Germany!) since it was considered to be the last big anniversaries with living soldiers who witnessed this day. Most of them were in their 80s and 90s and it was sure, only very few will see a 65th or even 70th celebration.

The Germany TV had a huge live coverage of the celebrations in France. Many documentaries, many live interviews, some recorded interviews of deceased soldiers, archive footage and many more things around DDay and ww2. It was a Saturday and I was glued to the TV to soak up as much as possible of this huge amount of information and specially the interviews. Maybe silly for others but for me it was a special day. I grew up with the war stories from my grandparents and other friends of the family and the liberation by the American troops was always a very important part of this. The breaking point. The new beacon of hope so many waited for. And even the last chance of survival. “We would have starved without the Americans” is something my grandmother still says today.

Very late that night, I saw a documentary about a young photographer who was there that day in 1944. He was on Omaha Beach in one of the boats, storming the beach together with the soldiers. He survived the day and his rolls of film were sent back to the UK for development. A young technician in the lab fucked up the process and only 6 of the photos were recovered. They are blurry, shaky and even out of focus but still haunting to look at.

This young photographer was already very well known in the world since he covered a lot of the Spanish civil war and he was considered to be one the very first war photographers. He later teamed up with some other famous photographers and they founded Magnum Photos, the first photo publishing agency which was owned by the photographers. Press photos were normally owned by the publishing newspaper or magazine and left the photographers only with the payment for the photos. Magnum turned it around and gave the photographers the rights for their own work.

This photographer, who made it through several wars, with a huge portfolio of many famous photos, some of them considered iconic, was called Endre Ernő Friedmann. But he used a different name. Robert Capa. Why the name? For his partner, Gerda Pohorylle, it was impossible to release photos or even work as a photographer as a woman. They created this fake person to be able to work as photographers and publish their photos.

I was overwhelmed by the photos I saw that night on TV during the big event. But not only that. The entire story about Robert Capa and what he did and how he was, left a huge impression on me.

Three years later, 2007, I visited Granada in Spain for a few times and there I saw it: a 20kg book, the size of a car, a cover of an united states world war two soldier in the water, the photo slightly out of focus and slightly shaken, and the huge letters over it, Robert Capa. I was only backpacking but I knew I had to buy it and I knew I had to carry it for the rest of the trip but I wanted it so badly. And I bought it and I carried it and when I was done with it, I read it again.

It was this book that made me consider to buy myself a camera. In 2008, when the first DSLRs dropped below the 500€ mark, I did it. With no experience or knowledge about photography. No clue what shutter, time, ISO, aperture or focal length mean. It was a Pentax K100 and it was my entry drug. That was 15 years ago. I can see the Robert Capa book from my couch. My back still hurts a bit when I look at it. Even today, whenever I leaf the house, I ask myself “should I take a camera with me?”. Because the best camera in the world is the camera you have with you.

https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/conflict/robert-capa-d-day-omaha-beach/