Records of Survival

Omaha Beach by Chim at the ICP is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik

The Daily Pic: The great photojournalist Chim registers recovery.

This fabulous and iconic picture, by the great photojournalist known as Chim, was taken in 1947 on Omaha Beach, in Normandy, where massive slaughter had been seen just a few years before. It’s now in a show called “We Went Back: Photographs from Europe 1933-1956 by Chim”, at the International Center of Photography in New York. This is just about the most lyrical image that Chim ever shot, and there’s something especially great about his rare use of color film for it. We mostly think of this era, and its horrors, as having happened in black and white, so it’s lovely that an image of recovery should glow, Oz-like, in soft polychrome.

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