Barbican

This pretty much captures the school run. As Robert Capa says: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

Sonnet and I attend a photography opening at the Barbican Centre and I am treated to Capa's original prints on loan from the ICP in New York. His most famous occurred D Day when he swam ashore with the second assault wave on Omaha Beach. I learn that Capa had two Contax II cameras mounted with 50 mm lenses and several rolls of spare film. He took 106 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion but a staff member at Life in London made a mistake in the darkroom; he set the dryer too high and melted the emulsion in the negatives in three complete rolls and over half of a fourth roll. Only eleven frames in total were recovered. (Capa never said a word to the London bureau chief about the cock up). Life magazine printed 10 of the frames in its June 19, 1944 issue, and I see the complete set last night.

The Barbican Centre BTW is worth a missive. Neighboring cool Clerkenwell and the City, It is the largest performing arts centre in Europe and home of the London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (Sonnet's Uncle Shelton was asked to run the thing but declined). The centre is part of the strange Barbican Estate which was built from '65 to '75 and a vision of high-rise living that would give J D Ballard a healthy boner. It even smells like the '70s somehow and reminds me of the Laurence Hall of Science: concrete everything. The 13 terrace blocks, grouped around the lake and green squares within the complex, house 4,000 people in 2,014 flats; there are three towers, the tallest 42 stories and soul destroying. I guess City guys keep a place at the Barbican since it is walking distance to the financial district yet in my 12 years of London I have never met a soul who lives there. Weird indeed.

"I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave. "
Robert Capa