Don McCullin, Jean, Whitechapel, London, c 1980
with Don McCullin’s exhibition at the Tate Britain. The photos absolutely blew me away. The composition, the subjects, the tonality of each shot was just stunning. His pictures of the homeless where so character driven and chock full of emotion – I could have spent all my time just in that wee gallery. Just completely floored by them, so much so I didn’t take any pictures in the gallery at all. It closes in three days but if you are in London before the 8th of May – go, go and just chill out with a very gifted photographer. If I lived in London I suspect I would find myself beating a path to go see them just cause they were there and I couldn’t say no.
Don McCullin, Homeless Irishman, Spitalfields, London 1969
From Wikipedia:
“Donald McCullin, FRPS CBE (born 9 October 1935, Finsbury Park, London, England) is an internationally known British photojournalist, particularly recognized for his war photography and images of urban strife. His career, which began in 1959, has specialized in examining the underside of society, and his photographs have depicted the unemployed, downtrodden and the impoverished.
McCullin’s period of National Service in the RAF saw him posted to the Canal Zone during the 1956 Suez Crisis, where he worked as a photographer’s assistant. He failed to pass the written theory paper necessary to become a photographer in the RAF, and so spent his service in the darkroom.
In 1959, a photograph he took of a local London gang was published in The Observer. Between 1966 and 1984, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the Sunday Times Magazine, recording ecological and man-made catastrophes such as war-zones, amongst them Biafra, in 1968 and victims of the African AIDS epidemic. His hard-hitting coverage of the Vietnam War and the Northern Ireland conflict is particularly highly regarded.
He also took the photographs of Maryon Park in London which were used in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blowup. In 1968, his Nikon camera stopped a bullet intended for him. In 1982 the British Government refused to grant McCullin a press pass to cover the Falklands War. At the time he believed it was because the Thatcher government felt his images might be too disturbing politically. However, it recently emerged that he was a victim of bureaucracy: he had been turned away simply because the Royal Navy had used up its quota of press passes.
He is the author of a number of books, including The Palestinians (with Jonathan Dimbleby, 1980), Beirut: A City in Crisis (1983), and Don McCullin in Africa (2005). His book, Shaped by War (2010), was published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North, Salford, England in 2010 and then at the Victoria Art Gallery, Bath and the Imperial War Museum, London. His most recent publication is Southern Frontiers: A Journey Across the Roman Empire, a poetic and contemplative study of selected Roman and pre-Roman ruins in North Africa and the Middle East.
In later years, McCullin has turned to landscape and still-life works and taking commissioned portraits.”
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