Don McCullin: The New Definitive Edition

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The landscapes in Britain and Southern Frontiers occupy the final rooms of the retrospective. We see them after seeing all the horrors that McCullin has photographed—an aesthetic reward, of sorts. But at the same time this turn to the pictorial, is not that far removed from what came before. Pictorial form has always been central to his photography. McCullin’s pictures can often rest upon cruel contradictions and absurdities. In a scene of horror from Beirut in 1976, a group of young Phalangist fighters, one strumming a mandolin, appear to rejoice amidst the slaughter, a singing troupe indifferent to the remains of the dead Palestinian girl before them. Despite his reputation as a war photographer, McCullin has said that Alfred Stieglitz was a key influence on his work. [7] Personal life [ edit ] Don McCullin". Exploring Photography. Victoria and Albert Museum. Archived from the original on 10 February 2007 . Retrieved 31 March 2007.

Honorary Doctorate of Letters by the University of Gloucestershire in recognition of his lifetime's achievement in photojournalism. [32] For his pictures made on assignment in the Congo, he gained access to places forbidden to photojournalists by pretending to be a mercenary—a deception that nearly cost him his life. Mercenary with Congolese Family, Paulus, Northern Congo, 1965, scuppers any normalcy associated with the convention of the formal posed group portrait by deploying it in a colonial situation fraught with tension and fear. The figure of the armed mercenary in the picture reflects his own dangerous entanglement with such people in a conflict where, as he has said, “evil men prevailed”. He is not alone in his preference for darkened clouds over clear skies. McCullin’s West Country is not far removed from the East Anglia of Constable’s Dedham Vale two centuries earlier. His knowledge of his historical predecessors places him deep in a Romantic tradition. His experience as a traveller reinforces the sense of a man on the edge of civilisation under siege. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his repeated views of the glories of Palmyra and of the destruction of this ancient Syrian city. I had long been uncomfortable with my label of war photographer, which suggested an almost exclusive interest in the suffering of other people. I knew I was capable of another voice.” Away from war Don's work has often focused on the suffering of the poor and underprivileged and he has produced moving essays on the homeless of London's East End and the working classes of Britain's industrialised cities.

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National service didn’t appeal to me. Even at 18, I had no interest in being yelled at by men in uniform. The authoritarian world was my enemy. McCullin's autobiography was lent to me by the friend who had just taken me to the photographer's retrospective exhibition at Tate Britain, which was excellent (one can hardly say 'enjoyable' given the content of many of the photographs). It has been great to read the book while the exhibition is still vivid in my mind. a b c Flanagan, Julian (2 November 2007). " 'I should have gone barmy' ". Financial Times . Retrieved 6 July 2020.

a b Cadwalladr, Carole (22 December 2012). "Don McCullin: 'Photojournalism has had it. It's all gone celebrity' ". The Guardian . Retrieved 22 March 2014. While most of us were sheltering from Covid, Don explored the mountains, valleys and coast of western Turkey, hunting out the most poignant and powerful ruins of the Roman Empire. He has created a meditation on landscape, the effects of light on ancient stone, the way clouds animate the past, but it is also inescapably about past conflict. About conquest, about imperium, about power. In 1961 he won the British Press Award for his essay on the construction of the Berlin Wall. His first taste of war came in Cyprus, 1964, where he covered the armed eruption of ethnic and nationalistic tension, winning a World Press Photo Award for his efforts. In 1993 he was the first photojournalist to be awarded a CBE.

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Devi pensare che stai rubando qualcosa che non ti appartiene di diritto. Stai rubando le immagini di altre persone." Don McCullin; Lewis Chester (2002). Unreasonable Behaviour: An Autobiography. Vintage Books. ISBN 0-09-943776-7. Throughout, he’s evaluating & re-evaluating his life & what it means; he thought the book might lay his demons to rest but it just made him feel awful about the breakup of his marriage… everything fell apart, his health, his marriage & his work dried up with the changes to newspapers’ priorities in the eighties. The updated preface reveals things had improved in the years since the original publication but you can’t help but wonder that no more permanent damage was done following a life of such brutal horror & ever-present risk.