Summer 1944 by John G. Morris – Contact Press Images

A photographic record of day-to-day life in the summer of 1944, during the arduous liberation of France.

John G. Morris, picture editor for Life magazine in 1944, arrived in France seven weeks after D-Day, in the middle of the Battle of Normandy. He had come to give help and support to the correspondents of his weekly magazine – figures such as the legendary Robert Capa – in producing their reports. Armed with a Rolleiflex and about fifteen rolls of black and white film, he went around capturing things he observed here and there during the summer of 1944. These were not combat photographs, and they remained at the bottom of a drawer for decades since John G. Morris did not consider himself to be a professional photographer. Robert Pledge of Contact Press Images eventually persuaded him to publish these forgotten images together with the letters John had sent to his wife in the United States during this period spent in France.

copyright John Morris / Contact Press Images

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