The Independent honors Harry Randall
Randall, standing, left: 'We found ourselves acting as runners, ammunition carriers, guards, observers,' he said of his photographic unit Fifteenth International Brigade Photographs Collection, Tamiment Library, New York University
Alasdair Fotheringham, writing for the UK’s Independent, recalls the life of Harry Randall, the photographer and Lincoln Brigade veteran who passed away in late last year:
Arriving in Spain on 1 July 1937, after a brief spell training with the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion –Canadian, but containing a large number of Americans – Randall was appointed head of the photographic section of the XV International Brigade, the unit which contained the largest number of English speaking volunteers. His official brief was to take photos for the Brigade’s newsletter, Volunteer for Liberty, and distribute images to news outlets and agencies: but the actual extent of his work was far broader than that. …
Randall’s tiny unit – Randall, Benjamin Katine and Anthony B Drossel and the lab technician William H Oderaka – recorded images of war with an immediacy that had rarely been possible before. Sometimes their photographs are harrowing, sometimes touchingly human, sometimes (like the soldier typing in an orange grove) almost surreal.
Read the full obituary here.
I read the well written obituary in the Independant today and want to pay homage to Harry. The men of the Lincoln Brigade travelled across the Atlantic ocean to fight for such a just cause. Their commitment inspires us still. Harry’s pictures are an honest testament, giving us all a picture into the Lincolns’ brave endeavour.
I salute you Harry.