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Korean War

David Douglas Duncan at 100: A month of tributes to David Douglas Duncan in honor of his 100th birthday—Part 4

January 28, 2016 - Harry Ransom Center

Louie Palu, U.S. Marine Cpl. Philip Pepper, age 22, Garmsir, Helmand, Afghanistan, from the series The Fighting Season, 2008. Inkjet print, 24 x 20 inches. Photography Collection, 2013:0003:0004 © Louie Palu

In the final installment of our tribute to David Douglas Duncan in the month of his 100th birthday, photographer Louie Palu offers a poignant reflection on the impact of Duncan’s combat photographs on his own work in war zones. Three photographs from Palu’s series The Fighting Season are featured in the upcoming Harry Ransom Center exhibition Look Inside: New Photography Acquisitions, opening February 9, and more of his work can be studied in our Reading and Viewing Rooms. Once again, all of us at the Ransom Center would like to wish David Douglas Duncan our warmest wishes as he enters his 101st year.

When I was a teenage aspiring photographer I was shaped by the work of David Douglas Duncan. His book of photographs from the Korean conflict, This is War!, expressed the psychological and emotional fragility of human beings affected by war unlike any other photographer’s work. [Read more…] about David Douglas Duncan at 100: A month of tributes to David Douglas Duncan in honor of his 100th birthday—Part 4

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: David Douglas Duncan, David Douglas Duncan 100th Birthday, Korean War, Louie Palu, Photojournalism, This Is War!, war photography

David Douglas Duncan at 100: A month of tributes to David Douglas Duncan in honor of his 100th birthday—Part 2

January 13, 2016 - Michael Gilmore

In the second installment of our tribute to David Douglas Duncan in the month of his 100th birthday, Michael Gilmore, Visual Materials Assistant, discusses a photograph of his father taken by Duncan during the Korean War. [Read more…] about David Douglas Duncan at 100: A month of tributes to David Douglas Duncan in honor of his 100th birthday—Part 2

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: David Douglas Duncan, David Douglas Duncan 100th Birthday, Korean War, Parris Island, Photojournalism, This Is War!, war photography

David Douglas Duncan at 100: A month of tributes to David Douglas Duncan in honor of his 100th birthday—Part 1

January 7, 2016 - Roy Flukinger

Internationally-renowned American photojournalist David Douglas Duncan celebrates his 100th birthday on January 23. For decades, Americans at home and abroad learned of world events as they unfolded before Duncan’s camera, first during his service as a combat photographer with [Read more…] about David Douglas Duncan at 100: A month of tributes to David Douglas Duncan in honor of his 100th birthday—Part 1

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: Captain Ike Fenton, David Douglas Duncan, David Douglas Duncan 100th Birthday, David Douglas Duncan: My 20th Century, Korean War, Photography, This Is War!, war photography

Veterans Day conversation with photojournalist (and Marine) David Douglas Duncan

October 29, 2014 - Roy Flukinger

David Douglas Duncan. "From the heights of Con Thien, the U.S. Marines of Mike Company look down upon the DMZ during daily fighter-bomber attacks on the enemy." Vietnam, September/October 1967.

The Ransom Center holds the archive of American photojournalist and author David Douglas Duncan, including his images of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. In honor of Veterans Day, Ransom Center Research Curator of Photography Roy Flukinger asked Duncan about photography, being a Marine, his experiences as a combat photographer, and his prediction about the next generation of war photographers. Below are Duncan’s responses, submitted in writing from his home in France.

Materials from Duncan’s archive can be seen in the Ransom Center’s online exhibition. More than 50 of Duncan’s photographs of Pablo Picasso and Jacqueline Roque are currently on view in New York City in the Pace Gallery’s exhibition “Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style.”

So many of today’s photojournalists are civilians with media credentials. In contrast, during many of the conflicts that you covered, you were a Marine, first on active duty and then as a veteran, working as a combat photographer. How would you characterize the critical difference this has made in your photography and in working with military personnel?

As a Marine I always worked alone, my notes for every shot plugged into my memory—never a notebook. All of the guys around me were Marines, and, as we all knew, if one got zapped, other vertical guys would somehow get you out—to be patched up or shipped home.

Today, much of the memorable coverage has been shot by amateurs with cell phones, not Washington/Army “implanted” pros—think Abu Gharib.

You wrote in This Is War! that “There is neither climax nor conclusion to this book.” And you repeated the phrase in the foreword to your Vietnam book, War Without Heroes. Having now completed decades of covering numerous conflicts throughout the globe, would you say that the same statement is appropriate to describing all wars and that future combat photographers will also find it impossible to tell the whole story?

There is no “whole story” in combat photography—only fragments of each moment that sometimes/often seems like eternity… and in that jungle, on that strip of obscene discolored far-from-home sand, the Marine at your shoulder is your only relative in that world—unlike no other but still precious and even long-loved by those who survived to come home to the world where almost every combat Marine is often a stranger even among his own family and friends… and then, confined to a veteran’s bed where the nights were often worse than that sandy beach or sodden jungle fox-hole where it was still possible to dream of everything, including tomorrow.

The men who fought the battles, who lived and died, who shared the service alongside you are clearly more than just the subjects of your camera. When we hung your exhibition and looked through your books you frequently recalled their names and shared many anecdotes about them. And the ones I met certainly remembered you. Is this a special relationship that is shared between veterans, that goes beyond just the basic reportorial dimensions of your picture stories?

One would doubt that other lives are so enriched as those of the Marines who were my combat friends…. yet, say among many lifelong career pros, the Formula One race drivers where everything can explode in fractions of a second… where they are wheel-to-wheel at 300 kilometers-an-hour and sure of the other driver’s professionalism and nerves under constant lethal pressure… yes, there must be other lives similar where the risks and lifelong friendships could well be similar to those of veteran Marines.

You revolutionized your field with the adoption of Nikon lenses and later technological advances.Have the digital and electronic changes we have witnessed in the last generation of photojournalism made it easier or harder to tell the story of war correctly and fully?

Digital cameras/smart phones even iPads, as seen everywhere, among tourists, children, hobbling ancients, workmen everywhere reporting back to control offices somewhere faraway—everybody is a photographer today. No sweat—and many among that digital-loaded horde are very, very good photographers, having fun—their generation/taking it for granted and surely filling souvenir books at home sometimes/possibly often holding masterpieces.

You have already provided us with a lifetime of words and photographs on the subject. Are there other aspects of the story of war that you might wish to see the next generation of combat photographers address more completely on future Veterans Days?
The next generation of war photographers? ……drones!

David Douglas Duncan. "Members of the 1st Marine Division on arrival in Pusan, Korea." August 2, 1950.
David Douglas Duncan. “Members of the 1st Marine Division on arrival in Pusan, Korea.” August 2, 1950.
David Douglas Duncan. "From the heights of Con Thien, the U.S. Marines of Mike Company look down upon the DMZ during daily fighter-bomber attacks on the enemy." Vietnam, September/October 1967.
David Douglas Duncan. “From the heights of Con Thien, the U.S. Marines of Mike Company look down upon the DMZ during daily fighter-bomber attacks on the enemy.” Vietnam, September/October 1967.
David Douglas Duncan. "U.S. Marine snipers work closely in three-man teams." Khe Sanh, Vietnam, February 1968.
David Douglas Duncan. “U.S. Marine snipers work closely in three-man teams.” Khe Sanh, Vietnam, February 1968.
David Douglas Duncan. "A fallen U.S. Marine is given aid for his wounds and comfort by his comrades." Korea, 1950.
David Douglas Duncan. “A fallen U.S. Marine is given aid for his wounds and comfort by his comrades.” Korea, 1950.

Filed Under: Photography Tagged With: David Douglas Duncan, Korean War, Marine, Photography, veterans, Veterans Day, Vietnam, war photography, World War II

War photography exhibition showcases images from the Ransom Center’s photography collection

January 16, 2014 - Natalie Zelt

Unknown photographer. “Insurgents in Coffins, Paris,” 1871. Albumen print.

Back in November the exhibition WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath opened at its fourth and final venue, the Brooklyn Museum. This exhibition, which I curated with Anne Tucker and Will Michels in my former role in the photography department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, featured over 400 photographic objects dating from 1848 to 2012, including a number of photographs from the Harry Ransom Center’s collections. Our curatorial mission was neither to tell a history of war illustrated by photography nor to present a series on singular photographers. Instead, we hoped to bring together a selection of objects that highlighted the intersections between war and photography.

 

Photographs from the Ransom Center collections were included throughout the exhibition, enriching the thematic sections that explored daily routine, shell shock, and dissemination, as well as battlefield burial and death.  The Gernsheim collection yielded a chilling 1871 print of communards in coffins, an image likely used to discourage further unrest in the streets of Paris, as well as Roger Fenton’s iconic and controversial 1855 photograph The Valley of the Shadow of Death from the Crimean War.

 

A Ransom Center fellowship funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship Endowment enabled curator Anne Tucker to spend weeks going through box after box of the Ransom Center’s prints, lantern slides, and stereographs. While in the reading room, she could compare the croppings of multiple photographs of Captain Ike Fenton and the U.S. Marines during the Korean War by David Douglas Duncan and share her findings. She also surveyed the collection of prints made at the height of the civil war in El Salvador by 30 international photographers, including Donna DeCesare and Harry Mattison.

 

The New York Journal- American photo morgue provided one of my favorite photographs in the exhibition. It is a small print from 1918 of a carrier pigeon being released from a tank on the Western Front. The image itself references one of the means of communication (pigeon transport) that is often associated with World War I, but it is also important as a photographic object because it carries the marks and highlights of an editor’s pencil, readying the print for reproduction and the image for dissemination.

 

Please click on the thumbnails below to view larger images.

 

David McLellan. “Releasing Carrier Pigeon from Tank, Western Front,” August 1918. Gelatin silver print.
David McLellan. “Releasing Carrier Pigeon from Tank, Western Front,” August 1918. Gelatin silver print.
Roger Fenton. “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” 1855. Salted paper print from a paper negative.
Roger Fenton. “The Valley of the Shadow of Death,” 1855. Salted paper print from a paper negative.
Felice Beato. “Gallows on which two of the King of Delhi’s sons were hanged for having taken part in the murder of the English resident at Delhi at the commencement of the mutiny, India,” May 1857. From the album “Photographic views, Crimea, India &c.” Albumen print.
Felice Beato. “Gallows on which two of the King of Delhi’s sons were hanged for having taken part in the murder of the English resident at Delhi at the commencement of the mutiny, India,” May 1857. From the album “Photographic views, Crimea, India &c.” Albumen print.
David Douglas Duncan. “Corporal machine-gunner Leonard Hayworth upon learning there were no more grenades, ammunition from his machine-gun reinforcements to take the place of the wounded and dead or communication from the rear, Korea,” September 1950. Gelatin silver print.
David Douglas Duncan. “Corporal machine-gunner Leonard Hayworth upon learning there were no more grenades, ammunition from his machine-gun reinforcements to take the place of the wounded and dead or communication from the rear, Korea,” September 1950. Gelatin silver print.
David Douglas Duncan. “Captain Ike Fenton, Commanding Officer of Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, receives reports of dwindling supplies during the battle to secure No-Name Ridge along the Naktong River, Korea,” September 1950. Gelatin silver print.
David Douglas Duncan. “Captain Ike Fenton, Commanding Officer of Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, receives reports of dwindling supplies during the battle to secure No-Name Ridge along the Naktong River, Korea,” September 1950. Gelatin silver print.
James (Jimmy) H. Hare “Men carrying wood to a pyre in the fields near Lioyang where five dead are laid out,” ca. 1904–1905. Lantern slide.
James (Jimmy) H. Hare “Men carrying wood to a pyre in the fields near Lioyang where five dead are laid out,” ca. 1904–1905. Lantern slide.
James (Jimmy) H. Hare. “Taking a bath at twelve below zero in December along the Sha O River,” c. 1904–1905. Gelatin silver print.
James (Jimmy) H. Hare. “Taking a bath at twelve below zero in December along the Sha O River,” c. 1904–1905. Gelatin silver print.
Unknown photographer. “Insurgents in Coffins, Paris,” 1871. Albumen print.
Unknown photographer. “Insurgents in Coffins, Paris,” 1871. Albumen print.
Roger Fenton. “L’Entente Cordiale,” February 29, 1856. Salted paper print.
Roger Fenton. “L’Entente Cordiale,” February 29, 1856. Salted paper print.
Harry Mattison. “Nuns Leaving the cathedral after the funeral of Archbishop Romero,” March 30, 1980. Gelatin silver print.
Harry Mattison. “Nuns Leaving the cathedral after the funeral of Archbishop Romero,” March 30, 1980. Gelatin silver print.
Timothy O’Sullivan. “A Harvest of Death,” July 4, 1863. Albumen silver print.
Timothy O’Sullivan. “A Harvest of Death,” July 4, 1863. Albumen silver print.

Filed Under: Exhibitions + Events, Photography, Research + Teaching Tagged With: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Anne Tucker, Brooklyn Museum, Captain Ike Fenton, David Douglas Duncan, Donna DeCesare, Harry Mattison, Korean War, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, New York Journal-American, Photography, Roger Fenton, The Valley of the Shadow of Death, war photography, Will Michels, World War I

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