Don McCullin

Didn't his Nikon F take a bullet and saved his life??
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mememarathon said:
The poor photographer getting lambasted by Don!
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If I was that photographer, I would've told Mr. McCullin to do a self-portrait if it bothers him that much and then I would've packed up and gone home.

Yep, it would be very unprofessional of me but I take the view that If I'm the one doing the pics, I'm the one to decide how I do them.

Doesn't stop be me being a talentless bozo though.😱
 
Watched the documentary about him in Netflix yesterday. It's quite a feat to have been eyewitness, like he was, to the baseness and sheer nastiness of the human animal and still somehow come out on the other side reasonably collected. I think he has two characteristics as a person that also show up in his photos: he's brutally honest, even with himself, and absolutely bloody-minded about going back in the pits of hell and doing his work.

The thing that stands out for me was what he and Harold Evans, his then editor in the Sunday Times, said about the present situation with photography in war/conflict zones, which was basically this: the horror that came back in pictures from Vietnam made the American military (and everyone else) understand that photography was a communication and opinion-shaping tool and thus it should, in the future, be curated according to their interests. Nobody is going to get unbridled access like McCullin did in the 60s. That chapter is over. The horror stays at home and the kids can go to sleep.

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There's a quote from the McCullin documentary that stuck with me:

“Sometimes people used to say to me, do you have nightmares? And I would say no, only in the daytime, when my eyes are open, and I’m awake, and my memory is on full alert. When I say I love photography, I love being in my darkroom—but even my darkroom is a haunted place.”
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I used to live perhaps 10 miles from Don McCullin in Somerset, I would pass his house occasionally and always wonder whether he was in his dark room with his ghosts that day...

Starting when I was six or seven years old, in the mid seventies, my Father would show me The Sunday Times magazine and the pictures both shocked but also fascinated me as if they were electrically charged. I have always admired the man, I always will. I don't really have heroes but Don McCullin would be top of the list...

Regards,

Simon
 
Last summer in Arles there was an interesting exhibition of his work. I was aware of his war photography bit I didn't know in the beginning he was much involved in social issues, documenting his own area with very deep photography.
robert
 
Don is my absolute favourite photographer, it was looking at his images that made me realise what photography is and can be, not just some good looking images, it transcends that.
Also, for me he made me realise that if he could produce such excellent work with film, all those years ago, surely I can produce something a percentile as good today?... One can hope.

As for the documentary, it's available through amazon prime video, it is in the UK at least.
 
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