Selected Works
Fijian Guerilla, 1944
Riyadh, 1947
General ‘‘Black Avni’’ Mizrak commanding Turkish cavalry,
guarding wintertime Russian frontier, 1948
Captain Ike Fenton, Baker Company Commanding Officer,
receives report of dwindling supplies during the battle to
secure ‘‘no-name’’ ridge, 1950
Corporal Hayworth, 1950
North Korea, 1950
Picasso, 1957
The Lido, 1962/1967
Marine in Trench at Con Thien, Vietnam, 1967
The Snipers of Khe Sanh, 1968
Further Reading
Duncan, David Douglas.I Protest!; New York: Signet
Broadside, 1968.
Duncan, David Douglas.Photo Nomad. New York: W.W.
Norton & Co., Inc., 2003.
Duncan, David Douglas. The Private World of Pablo
Picasso. New York: Ridge Press, 1958.
Duncan, David Douglas. Prismatics: Exploring a New
World. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1972.
Duncan, David Douglas.This is War: A Photo-Narrative.
New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951.
Duncan, David Douglas.War without Heroes. New York:
Harper & Row Publishers, 1970.
Duncan, David Douglas.Yankee Nomad, A Photographic
Odyssey. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966.
Gee, Helen.Photography of the 50s: An American Perspec-
tive. Tucson: Center for Creative Photography, Univer-
sity of Arizona, 1980.
Hicks, Wilson.Words and Pictures: An Introduction to
Photojournalism. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952.
Maloney, T.J., ed. ‘‘Korea: David Douglas Duncan.’’U.S.
Camera Annual 1951. New York: U.S. Camera Publish-
ing Corp., 1950.
Porter, Allan. ‘‘Living Masters of Photography.’’Camera
Lucerne (June 1974).
Rayfield, Stanley, ed.How Life Gets the Story: Behind the
Scenes in Photo-Journalism. Garden City: Doubleday &
Co., 1955.DYE TRANSFER
A photographic process capable of making color
prints of the highest quality, dye transfer was prin-
cipally used for commercial work. The quality
arises from the fact that the final picture is layered
onto and absorbed into archival quality paper from
four separate color images, creating a subtle and
stable color photograph. The dye transfer process,
invented by the Eastman Kodak Company, first
came on the market in 1945. Kodak discontinued
making materials for dye transfer in 1993, effec-
tively ending the practice at both commercial labs
and for the few practitioners of the complicated
and expensive process.
Basic Process
The dye transfer process is based on principles of
color separation discovered in the mid-nineteenth
century. To make a set of dye transfer separations,
a color transparency is exposed using filters—red,
green, and blue—onto three different black and
white film sheets. The exposure through the red
filter creates a negative separation of the cyan
(blue) image. The green filter creates the negative
separation for the magenta (red) image; the blue
creates the negative separation for yellow. The
separations are then each exposed onto another
black and white film called matrix film to create a
positive (which can be enlarged to the desired size).
The separation made with the red filter will then,
when reversed, be used to print the cyan image; the
green will print the magenta image; the blue will
print the yellow. The matrix film has a dimension-
ally stable plastic base coated with a thick layer of
silver halide emulsion suspended in a medium of
gelatin yellow dye. This dye serves to control the
penetration of the light used during the exposure,
allowing less exposure in areas of the thick matrix
and more in thinner areas.
When the silver has been reduced in the develop-
ment process, the gelatin hardens adjacent to
points on the image where the silver has turned
black. Excess gelatin and yellow dye are then
removed with repeated baths of hot water, leaving
a relief image in gelatin. This process is repeated for
each matrix, resulting in a set of three positive
matrices each with a gelatin relief image that is
thicker where that color will be darker.DYE TRANSFER