Im Fokus: Don McCullin

Don McCullin © Matilda Temperley

“I feel guilty all the time: guilty of having left
at a time when a man was dying of hunger,
or when another was about to be murdered.
And I’m tired of feeling guilty. I now want to photograph
landscapes and flowers. I convict myself to peace.”

Don McCullin has a complex relationship with war. He even said that he chased conflict like an alcoholic would chase beer. From Cyprus to Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, or Ireland, he played a pioneering role in photojournalism, giving it its credentials, alongside the likes of Capa, Jones Griffith and Burrows, and he elevated the discipline to an art form. His photos enable the public to stay abreast of events happening miles away; they raise questions, they shake up public opinion and prick consciences.

Born in 1935 in the working-class district of Finsbury Park in London, Don McCullin began his career almost by chance when, in 1959, one of his photos of “The Guvnors” gang was published by The Observer after the M**der of a policeman. While violence is central to the public’s understanding of his work, it is not its sole facet. Besides being a reporter, Don McCullin took an interest in marginalised populations in London, photographing the homeless, migrants and workers. The city, where he was born and raised, inspired his social consciousness. As an early witness to the prevailing poverty, he was able to pinpoint breakdowns in the social fabric of his country, the people left behind by industrialisation and the drop-outs of globalisation.

In 2017, he received Knighthood from the Queen for his exceptional career – he is one of the very few photographers to be granted the distinction. He now lives in Somerset and devotes his time to landscape photography. As surprising as it might seem at first, this transition is perhaps not all that unexpected. In the cloudy skies of the English countryside or the tortured ruins of Palmyra in Syria, Don McCullin continues to see the scars of both history and violence. His photos, even of peaceful places, seem to be laced with gunpowder, in an eternal echo of the theatres of war that have irrevocably shaped his gaze.

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