David Douglas Duncan
[Photojournalist, b. 1916, Kansas City, Missouri, lives in Mougins, France.]
I never felt in competition with anybody in war photography. You’re lucky to get your ass in and out again. It’s as simple as that. It’s the easiest photography in the world to shoot somebody who’s been shot up. It doesn’t take a genius. That’s easy. The only thing you need to know is your photography. Get in and if you’re lucky get out. And get as close as you can get.
It’s very simple... this banging around with a camera and typewriter as a “business” is just one helluva lot of fun.
I am no kook, hippie, hawk, or dove. I am just a veteran combat photographer and foreign correspondent who cares intensely about my country and the role we are playing—and assigning to ourselves—in the world of today. And I want to shout a loud protest at what has happened at Khe Sanh and in all of Vietnam.
(1967)
My objective always is to stay as close as possible and shoot the pictures as if through the eyes of the infantryman, the Marine, or the pilot. I wanted to give the reader something of the visual perspective and feeling of the guy under fire, his apprehensions and sufferings, his tensions and releases, his behavior in the presence of threatening death.
There’s nobody between you and the print. Nobody. It’s you and the subject and the final print. And if you get it published that way, you’ve said it.
You’ll never find one of my photographs that violates your privacy, or if you’re knocked off, your mother’s privacy. I never show you any corpses or shot-up bodies. These sons of bitches today, you know, after a typhoon, after an earthquake, anything, they’re right in there. That’s not my privilege. I want you to feel the story of fatigue and tragedy and heartbreak. If they’re dead, you’ll never see their faces.
