David Douglas Duncan, Cover photograph for This is War!, 1951
Earlier this month, David Douglas Duncan, one of the most influential photographers of the 20thcentury, passed away at the age of 102.
His career as a photojournalist began auspiciously when he was a college student and he photographed a hotel fire in Tucson, AZ. His images captured a hotel guest who repeatedly attempted to return inside of the burning building to retrieve his suitcase. That man was John Dillinger and the suitcase was filled with money stolen from a bank he had robbed.
Duncan is best known for the work he did as a combat photographer for the Marines during the Korean War which was published in a book called This is War!. His photographs portrayed the solders as they actually were, both courageous and frightened. He claimed that his only mission was to capture the complicated realities of war, which he admitted had the effect of bringing “a sense of dignity to the battlefield.”
This world-traveling photographer eventually settled in Castellaras in the south of France, near to his close friend Pablo Picasso. Duncan photographed the last 12 years of the life of Picasso eventually publishing seven books of photographs of the artist.
Click here to view a short video of photographs by David Douglas Duncan created by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where Duncan’s archives are located.
