Latest news with #LeonardMcCombe
BBC News
08-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Wartime photographers images show 'pivotal moment in history'
Images captured during the final months of World War Two in Europe have gone on display on the Isle of Man for the first exhibition of Manx-born photographer Leonard McCombe's work was put together to coincide with the 80th anniversary of VE photographs on display at the House of Manannan in Peel show glimpses of some of the key events in Normany, Berlin and London in the months around the end of the conflict in history curator for Manx National Heritage Matthew Richardson said the images provided a "fantastic documentary record of this pivotal moment in the history of Europe". Born in 1923, McCombe spent his childhood in Port Erin in the south of the island and took up photography as an early was commissioned to capture the alien internees held in the island's only all-female internment camp at Rushen following the outbreak of war, and went on to travel through Europe working as a the end of the war he moved to the United States, where he spent many years continuing to work as a photographer for Life left the profession to focus on the family farm after the publication closed. The display, which is running in parallel to an exhibition at Heidelberg University, has been put together with McCombe's family, and coincides with a stamp issue featuring five decades of his McCombe said seeing the his father's wartime work on display "gives me goosebumps, literally"."There's this chaos of war and he's there with a camera, and he's 21 years old. You start to put all that together and you realise, while he's daddy, I should have known he was much more than I thought he was at 12 or especially 15 or 16 years old."I can't image what he went through, what that generation went through," he added. Mr Richardson said McCombe had been "in the right place at the right time" during the final months of the conflict."He was on the Normandy battlefields, he was in Paris as the city was liberated, and he was in Berlin in the immediate aftermath of VE Day, and he just had such an eye for capturing an image," he Richardson added: "This is an exhibition that really brings it home to people what the real consequences of the fighting in Europe were."By the time the dust settled in 1945 several European capitals had been reduced almost to rubble, and this exhibition shows in human terms what that means, what the consequences were for those people who'd lost their homes, lost everything."The exhibition will be on display until 05 October. Read more stories from the Isle of Man on the BBC, watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer and follow BBC Isle of Man on Facebook and X.
BBC News
05-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Stamps capture Manx photographer's five-decade career
A new stamp set celebrates five decades of the career of a Manx photographer who captured images documenting aspects of World War Two as well as post-war the Lens of Leonard McCombe features the photojournalist's work from his early days on the island, wartime images and later magazine work in the United on Thursday's 80th anniversary of VE Day, the set coincides with an exhibition at the House of Manannan focusing on his war McCombe, who helped to develop the set, said his father's work had captured the "images, emotions and history of a world recovering from World War Two". The eight images featured include a fisherman on a Manx vessel near the Calf of Man, a female ferry pilot of the Air Transport Auxiliary, who transported aircraft from the factory to the aerodrome during the conflict, and a Texan cowboy rounding up spring-born calves. Born on the island in 1923 and growing up in Port Erin, McCombe took up photography at the age of 14, with his early work including capturing images of those held at the island's only all-female internment camp in moving to England, he went on to cover the allied advance during World War Two before moving to the United States and capturing American cowboys and the Navajo Nation. His portfolio of work also includes images of Winston Churchill and several US Presidents, as well as the Apollo moon launch. The Isle of Man Post Office's general manager for stamps and coins Maxine Cannon said many of the images used for the stamp issue had "never been seen or published since the rolls of film were developed several decades ago".That was because in his later years McCombe, who died in 2015, had spent most of his time farming, meaning his "treasure trove of scrapbooks, writings, negatives, prints and books lay forgotten in his study", she added. Read more stories from the Isle of Man on the BBC, watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer and follow BBC Isle of Man on Facebook and X.
