War photographer’s naked encounter with Picasso

On February 8, 1956, the photographer David Douglas Duncan, who has died aged 102, rang the doorbell of La Californie, the home of Pablo Picasso in the French town of Cannes.

He announced that he was a comrade of Picasso’s friend Robert Capa, the late photographer who had covered Spain’s civil war. Jacqueline, who in 1961 became Picasso’s second wife, then took the American by the hand and led him upstairs, past a goat named Esmeralda.

He met a naked Picasso in his bathtub. Duncan gave him a ring, engraved with DDD, the initials by which he was known, and the name Picasso. It

David Douglas was carved in the shape of a

Duncan cockerel. The ice broken, Picasso allowed Duncan Photographer to photograph b January 23, 1916 him, as he d June 7, 2018 grinned and scrubbed behind his ears. ‘‘He was like a naive little child,’’ Duncan would recall.

Over the next 17 years the American struck up a friendship with Picasso, creating a visual archive of 25,000 pictures. Many focused on his relationship with Jacqueline. Duncan also captured Picasso day to day, tucking into dover sole or playing with his dachsund, Lump, in the garden.

Picasso was fascinated by Duncan’s record as a war photographer for the United States Marines. When the Americans attacked Okinawa in Japan in 1945, Duncan was suspended under the wing of a P-38 fighter aircraft, sealed in a tank so hot that ‘‘I lost 11 pounds in 45 minutes’’. Thus placed, Duncan recorded the precise moment that American aircraft released napalm. He explained in 1951: ‘‘I want to give the reader something of the visual perspective and feeling of the guy under fire.’’

Experiencing a 77-day bombardment in Khe Sanh in Vietnam changed his stance on war. ‘‘We seem determined to impose our will and way of life upon most of the rest of the world, whether or not they want it, appreciate it or ask for it,’’ he wrote in I Protest! (1968), which contained Khe Sanh photographs.

Sold for US$1 a copy, the book assured Duncan’s place at the front row of photojournalism. At a retrospective about 40 years later, he burst into tears contemplating his photograph of a marine with a vacant stare, from 1950. ‘‘It was dawn,’’ he recalled, then aged 97. ‘‘It was very cold, around -30, we were hungry. We could no longer talk.’’ Asked for a piece of advice for budding photojournalists, he replied: ‘‘You have cameras. They are political weapons, you have to use them.’’

David Duncan Douglas was born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of a businessman who opened one of the region’s first cinemas. On his 18th birthday his sister gave him a 39-cent camera. He photographed a fire at a hotel, including a man dragging a suitcase from the burning building. This, although he did not

Duncan would show Picasso the photographs he had taken for approval. ‘‘Does a painter ask for permission to paint?’’ Picasso inquired.

know it, was one of America’s most wanted men, John Dillinger, and he was trying to salvage stolen dollar bills. When Duncan gave the photo to a local newspaper, it lost it.

In 1943 he joined the marines and four years later married Leila Khanki. They later divorced. Posted to the Solomon Islands, he met Richard Nixon, then a navy lieutenant. In 1968 he would take a memorable shot of Nixon, alone and isolated, as he drafted his acceptance speech for his Republican nomination as president.

Duncan also documented the end of the British occupation in India, took photographs in Iran and Palestine and obtained permission from Nikita Khrushchev to photograph Russian paintings. These he published in The Kremlin (1960). Other books included Self-Portrait: USA (1969), and in 1982 The World of Allah (picturing Muslim societies in the Middle East). Faceless (2000) focused on the elusive photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

As well as his stark images of war, Duncan is perhaps best remembered for the eight books he produced on Picasso. His photos of the painter dancing in his underpants, and skipping with his young children, were taken using a special custom-built camera. It had a silent shutter to avoid disturbing Picasso.

Duncan would show the artist the photos he had taken for approval. ‘‘Does a painter ask for permission to paint?’’ Picasso inquired.

Every day Duncan discreetly snapped away until just after the soup was consumed at supper and the sun set. He settled at Castellaras on the Cote d’Azur with his second wife, Sheila, whom he married in 1962.

After Picasso’s death in 1973, Duncan kept a friendship with Jacqueline and the painter’s children. On hearing of Duncan’s death from pneumonia, Claude, Picasso’s son, declared: ‘‘The Yankee nomad has departed for another big adventure. He was part of our daily lives as a member of the family. DDD is the photographer who most successfully depicted Picasso with discretion and affection.’’

For his part, Duncan said Picasso had influenced his style of photography. Five years ago, while in Barcelona for an exhibition of his pictures of Picasso, Duncan used his crutches to point at images. Some showed Picasso in a bathrobe; others in feathers, as an Apache Native American. ‘‘Memories, memories, memories,’’ muttered Duncan, shuffling from one room to another. – The Times