Art: Seized Moment

• Share

(2 of 2)

His coverage of Marines in combat in Korea was hailed at the time by Edward Steichen as "the greatest photographic document ever produced showing men at war." But it may well be surpassed by Duncan's later work in Viet Nam. This series of photographs, taken from 1967 onward, represents the end of a trajectory of enthusiasm that began with the gung-ho spirit of his World War II coverage and ended in the blooded dust of Con Thien and Khe Sanh. It is filled with a gaunt and hopeless veracity; out of the strained faces of the Marines, the huddled dead, the looming black silhouettes of choppers and wrecked transport, the dirty light and the funereal columns of smoke and dust, Duncan has produced something near to a photographic equivalent of Goya's The Disasters of War.