Planning session during the preparation for the D-Day landings

A cluster of soldiers bends over a map, their faces caught in that particular kind of concentration that shows up when the stakes could not be higher. Robert Capa took this photograph in 1944, during the tense weeks leading up to the D-Day landings, when Allied commanders were plotting one of the biggest military operations ever attempted. No guns appear, no chaos, only men leaning close together to study the ground they would soon fight over. Shot in black and white, with heads nearly touching, the scene carries a quiet, almost private mood.

Capa built his reputation as a war photographer who refused to keep his distance from danger. He waded ashore alongside the troops on D-Day and kept shooting while bullets flew around him. Sadly, most of those pictures were destroyed in a darkroom mishap, and only about a dozen survived, the famous blurry frames now called the "Magnificent Eleven." This calmer image is a good reminder that war is not only battle. Long stretches of careful thought and planning came first, and sometimes the course of history bends around a handful of people working things out over a table.