Don McCullin: The New Definitive Edition

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After a career spanning sixty years, Sir Don McCullin, once a witness to conflict across the globe, has become one of the great landscape photographers of our time. McCullin’s pastoral view is far from idyllic. Though the woods and stream close to his house in Somerset have offered some respite, he has not sought out the quiet corners of rural England. He is drawn, instead, to the drama of approaching storms. He has an acute sense of how the emptiness of his immediate landscape echoes a wider tone of disquiet. a b c "Entre Vues: Frank Horvat – Don McCullin (London, August 1987)". Frank Horvat Photography . Retrieved 2 September 2013. 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. How did Don McCullin survive? Has he ever had PTSD? Wounded in an explosion that killed the man next to him, caught in the crossfire more than once, imprisoned in a jail where others were being clubbed to death with a sledgehammer, being close by when other journalists (& friends) were killed by missiles or bullets & frequently only narrowly escaping with his life, he’s had a charmed, horrifying life, despite his best efforts!

Don McCullin (1994). Sleeping with Ghosts: A Life's Work in Photography. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-03241-0. O'Hagan, Sean (7 February 2010). "Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin". The Guardian . Retrieved 2 May 2018.

Rome’s eternal legacy

In 2012 there was an excellent documentary released about him, which I recommend highly so it surprises me that I have only just got around to reading it now considering it was published in 1992 (and I don't think it has been updated for this edition, although I am ready to be corrected.) It is the story of his career and life, although after the latter forms more the top and tail of the book than the former. a b c Flanagan, Julian (2 November 2007). " 'I should have gone barmy' ". Financial Times . Retrieved 6 July 2020. At times the book is very dark, but that is to be expected from a book about a war photographer. McCullin says that he wanted to shake up the Brits sitting at home on their sofa's. Evidently he has done so with his photographs, but he accomplishes the same thing with this book. If you're interested in current affairs and journalism then read this book. If you're interested in the price that some people pay for their work then read this book. It's good. I was blown away by the Don McCullin exhibition at the Tate Britain & so I’m devouring his autobiography... I also splashed out on the impressive book of pictures that accompanies the exhibition; beautifully shot, harrowing, very occasionally amusing pictures from a lifetime of photo journalism.

In my teenage years, I became obsessed with Vietnam war films. I devoured everyone I could come across. Big or small budgets made no difference to me. But these films were never going to entirely capture what it was like for the men and women who served out there. So I turned to the literary world in hopes of gleaming just a fraction of what it was like to have had boots on the ground. As I scoured the available information a set of photos came up time and again. With just a little digging the name Dom McCullin came up. His images of the war seemed to capture some of the true horrors of what they faced in a raw and unfiltered way that I think the general public had not really been exposed to before. A great many years later I was able to go to an exhibit of his works this time however it was of the landscape of his home county. As it turns out just a few miles away from where I live. It was fascinating to see someone's work switched to a completely different subject matter. Yet his work still had the same ability to make you stop and just stare as if held by some unseen force. Don McCullin (2010). Southern Frontiers: A Journey Across the Roman Empire. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 978-0-224-08708-7.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.

I found it ironic that I was reading about Don McCullin’s time in 1971 in the Bogside area of Derry in Northern Ireland, on Good Friday 2019, the day after a resurgence of serious unrest in Derry resulted in the death of a journalist, doing exactly what McCullin was doing 38 years ago… 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.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.