In 1944, John G. Morris was a young picture editor working in London for Life magazine, overseeing the photographic reportage of World War II. Normally confined to the picture desk, in June of that year he went to France to coordinate the coverage of the D-Day landings – of which the work of his friend Robert Capa became so famed.

Morris’s 14 rolls of black-and-white film from the four weeks he spent in north-western France were never intended for publication. The negatives and contact sheets remained in his personal archive until a long-time friend from Contact Press Images, Robert Pledge, rediscovered them and curated their exhibition at Visa pour l’image in 2013.

These images, now published in Quelque part en France: l’été 1944 de John G. Morris (Somewhere in France: John G. Morris and the Summer of 1944), provide a personal perspective of the Allied troops advancing toward German strongholds.

Morris, now 97, will be joining us in conversation with Robert Pledge, the co-founder of the international independent picture agency Contact Press Images, to present his images and discuss his world of photographic reportage.

“I was photographing the margins of the war but they kind of held up a picture of what war is really like.” — John G. Morris

Your wonderful and kind messages mean so much to us, as has your friendship, council and support over so many years. There is no prize in our trade that we could ever value as much as your belief in us.

– Vaughan and Pranvera Smith

 

Thank you to Stewart Purvis, Richard Gizbert, Tina Carr, Emma Beals, Allan Little, Mani, Stuart Hughes, Richard Sambrook, Jon Snow, Marina Litvinenko, Martin Bell, Tom Fenton, Anthony Loyd, Lyse Doucet, Bill Neely, Lindsey Hilsum, Charles Glass, John G Morris, Salim Amin, Liz Palmer Gary Knight, Jon Lee Anderson, Jeremy Bowen, Matt Frei and Jean-Jacques Gonfier.