80 years ago 1945: Leonard McCombe – Nach dem Krieg / Aftermath of War
Born and raised on the Isle of Man, Leonard McCombe (1923 – 2015) was a teenager when he began taking photographs and selling his first images to London newspapers. At the age of 18 he became a war correspondent with the English Picture Post; three years later, in 1944, he reported on the advance of the Allies in Normandy. In the same year he was elected the youngest member of the Royal Photographic Society.
McCombe’s images appeared, inter alia, in the magazines Collier’s and Picture Post, as well as in the legendary American LIFE Magazine. They documented the end of the war in Europe in 1944/45, the destruction of the cities, the suffering and hopelessness of the survivors. Leonard McCombe’s photos confront us unsparingly with the misery of fleeing and displacement as a consequence of the war unleashed by Nazi Germany.
The exhibition at the HCA shows shots from 1944 to 1946 which Leonard McCombe took in Normandy, in Paris, Berlin and Warsaw. It is the first time that these pictures have been shown in Germany since the rolls of film were developed eighty years ago. On his farm on Long Island the photographer preserved hundreds of photo albums and thousands of negatives and prints. Our thanks go to Leonard McCombe’s son Clark McCombe and his wife Beverly Ortiz McCombe, who take care of this collection and made the photos available to Heidelberg University for this show.