One of the first photography books I was given as a teenager was Don McCullin’s autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour (Jonathan Cape, 1990). It was powerful reading and certainly made a huge impression on me at a time when I was just beginning to explore the medium for myself. After a career spanning 50 years McCullin documented every major conflict in his adult lifetime up until the Falklands war. During this period, he also continued to document the dramas, injustices and eccentricities of his own country – England. Work which was published a couple of years ago, Don McCullin In England (Jonathan Cape, 2007).

“So much of my war reporting had involved watching national identities take shape that I began to ask myself who I was. What were the English and what did they represent? What for that matter did I represent? ” (McCullin, 1990).

Finally, a major exhibition of the work has just opened at the National Media Museum and runs until the 27th September 2009.

It’s described as “a dark, often uncomfortable vision of a divided nation where the gulf between rich and poor remains as defined as ever. However, McCullin balances his anger at social injustice with great humanity, compassion, lyricism and occasional humour.”

The NMM have set up a pretty extensive website around the exhibition with video interviews and links to McCullin’s work. It’s certainly worth having a look at. In the meantime, here are a few of the pictures from the exhibition, alongside some quotes from McCullin (taken from the NMM website):

The Guv’nors, Finsbury Park, London © Don McCullin, 1958

“I was just an amateur, feeling my way with no real knowledge of what I was doing. At the same time I had found a direction… In the next four years I started learning what photography was all about and gaining a broader picture of the world than I’d ever had in Finsbury Park, where it all began.”  (Don McCullin,1994)

Mother and son, Bradford © Don McCullin, 1978

“I stopped wandering when I reached Bradford, where I found a microcosm of the dark satanic legacy that we had inherited from Britain’s industrial heyday … I was met everywhere by warm and courteous people … In Bradford I experienced a new freedom, wandering through the quiet dilapidated streets where, for the first time in years, I encountered a great deal of hospitality and the welcome absence of violence. I discovered here a city, a living city, and in so doing I rediscovered myself – not always a comfortable process.”  (Don McCullin,1994)

East End, London  © Don McCullin, 1973

“For six weeks in the winter of 1969 I appeared at dawn on the streets of Whitechapel in London’s East End … Communication was difficult at the best of times, for I was dealing with alcoholics and schizophrenics who were sometimes violent and dangerous … Stealing pictures of these people with a long lens was not my style. I wanted to be close to them, to feel their plight and to convey the emotion of contact with them. I wanted their trust and to become their voice.” (Don McCullin,1994)

Mayfair, London  © Don McCullin, 1965

“We are not as class conscious as we used to be but there is still that barrier there… It’s a tricky place this country, even though it’s changed during the years from Thatcher to Blair. But if you’re a photographer, you can exploit some of those unpleasant and tricky sides to it… It’s tricky this country but I like that because it’s a challenge.” (Don McCullin, 2009)

Bradford © Don McCullin, 1973

“I can’t describe how I feel when I’ve had a good day photographing people, having met and talked to them and had their co-operation. It’s as if somebody’s given me an enormous present; I go home as if I’ve got a full belly.” (Don McCullin, 1979)

Towards an Iron Age hill fort, Somerset © Don McCullin, 1991

“I’m probably the only person in England who’s anxious for the winter. As soon as the leaves of autumn start falling from the trees, I become reactivated, the opposite of a hibernating animal. I know that I’ve got four long months of darkness, wind and cold to exercise my masochism. The English landscape’s known for its Constable summers but I’m obsessed with photographing it in the dead of winter, at its hardest … I love the winter – not the climate, but the struggle, its abrasiveness, the nakedness of the landscape.” (Don McCullin, 1979)

Don McCullin reviews his career with John Tusa on BBC Radio 3 here
(August 2002).

Observer interview covering his career, with great detail on his early years here
(August 2005).

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