Somewhere In France, The Summer of '44


	John Godfrey Morris was born in 1916 in Maple Shade, New Jersey, in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and spent his childhood and youth in Chicago, where he would go on to study and graduate in political science. He has since been intimately involved with the story of twentieth century photojournalism. As Life magazine’s photo editor for Europe, based in London, in charge of coordinating the photographic war coverage of the Western Front during World War II, he managed to save the eleven historic images by Robert Capa of the D-Day Normandy landing of June 6, 1944, which had been damaged in development. His career spans tenures with the Magnum photo agency, Ladies' Home Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times. His autobiography, “Get the Picture, A Personal History of Photojournalism” (Random House 1998; University of Chicago 2002) has been translated into five languages (French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish). He has received prestigious awards such as the Dr. Erich Salomon Preis from the German Society of Photography (DGPh, Cologne, 2003) and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Center of Photography (ICP, New York, 2010). He was made a knight in France’s Legion of Honor in 2009. He lives in Paris.

	John G. Morris & Robert Pledge, New York City, October 2013 © Sam Matamoros
	Robert Pledge was born in March 1942 in London, UK, and moved to Paris, France at the age of ten. A student of West African languages and anthropology, he found his way into journalism as a specialist in African affairs. In 1970 he coordinated a daring trip in Africa with the late photographer Gilles Caron and filmmaker-photographer Raymond Depardon. He became an editor of the French visual arts magazine Zoom and later, director of the New York office of the picture agency Gamma. In 1976 he founded in New York the international independent picture agency Contact Press Images with American photographer David Burnett. He has curated major photographic exhibitions throughout the world and sat on prestigious international juries such as the World Press Photo and the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography. He has edited highly acclaimed books including Red-Color News Soldier (Phaidon) with Chinese photographer Li Zhensheng; and 44 Days: Iran and the Remaking of the World (Focal Point/National Geographic), a text and photographic memoir of David Burnett’s photographs on the 1979 Islamic Revolution, written with Jacques Menasche, that received the Overseas Press Club of America’s “Olivier Rebbot Award” respectively in 2004 and 2010. He commutes between Paris and New York, and is a frequent visitor to China.