Duncan, photographer of combat and Picasso, dies

Nice, France: The American photographer David Douglas Duncan, who garnered global acclaim for his stark photographs of war while also taking some of the most famous pictures of Pablo Picasso, died on Thursday in France aged 102.

Duncan had been living on the French Riviera since the 1960s, and had a home in Castellaras, outside Cannes.

“He died following complications from pneumonia, surrounded by those close to him” at a hospital in the southern town of Grasse, Jean- Louis Andral, director of the Picasso museum in Antibes said.

Duncan began working as a freelance in the 1930s, travelling across North and South America, according to the University of Texas at Austin, to which Duncan donated his archives in 1996.

After fighting in WWII as a Marine, he made soldiers a focus of his work while shooting for Life magazine, beginning with an assignment during the Korean War. The experience would mark the rest of his career. “To learn their stories, each page of photographs must be read as carefully as you might read a page of written text in a novel,” he wrote in the preface to his 1951 collection This is War.

Duncan also became close to Picasso, gaining rare access to the Spanish artist in relaxed and playful poses at his home and studio — one of the most emblematic showing him eating a fish clean off the bone in his kitchen.

“He met Picasso in 1956 and they remained good friends until his death in 1973, and also with his widow Jacqueline and his daughter Catherine,” Andral said. But it was his war photography which brought him to fame, with his raw portraits capturing the grim fate of soldiers in the Korean War and during the fighting in Vietnam.

David Douglas Duncan became close to Picasso, gaining rare access to the Spanish artist in relaxed and playful poses at his home and studio — one of the most emblematic showing him eating a fish clean off the bone in his kitchen