David Douglas Duncan dies, aged 102
THE AMERICAN photographer David Douglas Duncan, known for his harsh pictures depicting the realities of war, has died in France aged 102. Duncan, known by many simply as DDD, died at a hospital following complications from pneumonia. The former US Marine Corps combat photographer was employed as a staff photographer for
Life magazine just a month after his honourable discharge from the Marines in 1946.
His work for Life often focused on soldiers, shooting in locations such as Korea and Vietnam. Later in his career he would become an outspoken anti-war campaigner, advising young photographers to use their cameras as ‘political weapons’. He was known as well for his photos of the artist Picasso, with whom he came to form a close bond, capturing his life at home and in the studio.
Duncan is also credited as helping to propel the success of Nikon, then a little-known camera manufacturer, after a chance encounter while on assignment in Japan in the 1950s. Throughout his coverage of the Korean War, Duncan mounted Nikkor lenses on his Leica rangefinders. On the advice of Duncan, another two Life photographers covering the Korean War purchased Nikon equipment. The Korean War had started during a bitterly cold winter, during which the Nikon equipment proved to be more resilient than other cameras.
Duncan’s championing of the quality of Nikon and Nikkor lenses popularised the brand, helping to establish the post-Second World War Japanese camera industry. In recognition of this role, Nikon presented him with the 200,000th Nikon F camera in 1965.
An archive with more than 100,000 prints, negatives and transparencies, as well as field notebooks, publications and manuscript materials documenting DDD’s life and career, is held at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas. To see an online gallery of more than 600 of Duncan’s images, visit https://budurl.me/DDD2018.