Chris Beetles Fine Photographs present an exhibition featuring a single photograph by each of the agency’s 62 Member photographers.
Some of the world's best-known images from this extraordinary archive will be on view, including:
Robert Capa’s image of US servicemen landing on the Normandy beaches during the D-Day landings, 1944;
Rene Burri’s Che Guevera (1963) – the image of this most famous of revolutionaries;
Stuart Franklin’s Tiananman Square (1989) – a student's bravery is captured as he blocks a line of Chinese tanks during protests;
David Hurn’s iconic photograph of The Beatles while recording at Abbey Road Studios in 1964;
Martin Parr’s 'Last Resort' – taken from the famous British photographer's seminal project made in New Brighton, Liverpool in the period 1983-5.
* The story behind the image featured above has become part of photographic legend. Robert Capa set out to be with the first Allied troops landing in France on D-Day, and was one of the only civilian photographers to encounter significant resistance from German troops. In rough seas, US landing craft heading for Omaha Beach went somewhat off course and units became separated. In disarray and under fire, the soldiers with whom Capa entered the water took temporary shelter behind German obstacles placed in the sea, but sustained heavy casualties in the chaotic and lengthy struggle to reach the beach. Capa photographed three rolls of film in the first two hours of the invasion before heading back to England with a departing boatload of wounded soldiers. However in the rush to meet the magazine deadline, a young technician in Life magazine's London lab turned the heat up too high on the film dryer and melted the emulsion on all but eleven of the photographs.
Other images by military photographers on the scene help put Capa's work into context; Robert F. Sargent photographed troops disembarking, while other photographs show the immediate aftermath later in the afternoon of D-Day, and the subsequent scale of the invasion. Here's how the beach looks today.