Don McCullin-Shaped By War

I've been an admirer of Don McCullin for many years, from his early work in the streets of London, his war photography, and more recently, his brooding landscapes.

On Saturday i happened to be in Manchester for a Spencer Tunick photo installation, so took the opportunity to to go along the Imperial War Museum North as they have and extensive exhibition of Don McCullins work to celebrate his 75th year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8492000/8492777.stm

Although there's an introduction to his early work, and a little of his later work at the end, this is primarily about his his war photography.

The room is dark and this makes you focus very much on the photos and memorabilia. Very quickly i felt great sadness looking at the photos from Vietnam, but walking slowly round it's terrible to see just how many wars he covered. Vietnam and Cambodia, Beirut, Biafra, El Salvador, Northern Ireland to name just a few.

In Vietnam he took the iconic image of a US Marine staring shell shocked. The photo is about five feet tall, and so just about life-sized. You can look closely at those eyes and only imagine the horrors that left him in such shock. Just one man who's life was perhaps forever ruined by mankind's sickness and desire to destroy
At the side of the photo is another smaller version with post it notes, and scribblings showing exposure times for the final print. My photography brain suddenly took over, i couldn't help but look back and forth at the different versions, and realised just how much care the magazines took to make sure a photo was the best it could be........

Then it was back to the unrelenting horrors of the photos on display. Wounded soldiers, dead soldiers, a man forcing himself up in the back of  a truck in his last moments of life desperate not to die. McCullin had also been wounded in the mortar attack that killed this poor guy. A marine throwing a grenade, and next to it a photo of the same marine being comforted by colleagues as he'd been shot in the had immediately after.
A well known photo of a dead Vietcong soldier. The Americans looted the body, then McCullin carefully placed the dead mans personal effects for the shot, including a family photo. It was the only time Don McCullin placed items like that. What a terrible and sad thing to feel the need to do, and yet such a poignant and sad image it created.

How crazy it must have been in Cambodia! Many photographers were captured and killed. McCullin lost friends there and was lucky to get away himself.
Sean Flynn, the son of actor Errol Flynn, was one of the photographers captured in Cambodia with his colleague, Dana Stone. They never came back! Tortured maybe? Murdered certainly!

I looked at the photos from the Biafran war. This was a rare occasion that Don McCullin ignored the fighting and focused on the suffering of the people as they had supplies cut off. Starving women and children, hundreds with cholera in one building just waiting to die. There's no hope to be seen in their eyes.
FUCKING HELL! I want to scream and cry!! What is wrong with mankind?

Amongst all the photographs there were memorabilia. Magazine articles, equipment he used. There's the Nikon camera that took a bullet, a bullet that may have killed him otherwise. There's contact prints from his photos. It's amazing to see how consistent his exposures were. In my mind i try to think what it must be like in mid battle to be taking light readings. To be so aware of what you're doing despite the horrors going on around you is quite amazing. Such professionalism under fire!

Beirut is another example of our inhumanity. Is that the correct term? Maybe such shit is the real humanity, and the good side is inhumane, our history would suggest such!
The Israeli bombings in Beirut...Such a waste of life! And seeing photos of the Phalangist Christians forcing Palestinian women and children out of their impoverished homes, and the next photo of the two men shot dead in the stairwell.
The Palestinians forced from their lands became an easy target as refugees!  An ugly reminder of how we pick on the displaced around us and blame them for our troubles.
Don't we see it to a much lesser degree here today? The way people quickly lay the blame for everything on immigrants? Yet isn't it the troubles between the Israelis and Palestinians to blame for much of the modern terrorism? Why can't we just live in peace??

There are images from Cypress, the Greeks and the Turks fighting....for what? Why do humans have to hate so much? Why this sickening desire to solve our differences with guns and bombs?

Much nearer to home we have Northern Ireland. Troubles going back hundreds of years that suddenly flared up in the late 60's. Years of terrorist murder. Catholics against Protestants! Christian against Christian! We can't change the past, but we can stop the killings of today, surely we have to!
Photographers became the target of rioting youths just as much as the army were. The streets full of rocks and petrol bombs thrown at anyone they didn't like. What a terrible few decades these people had to look forward to. It wasn't a situation where any side could be seen as being good. Too much killing, too much murder!
Although there's greater peace there now, just tonight as i type there's a report of a bomb going off, and recent the Real IRA claimed responsibility for another bombing. Surely the people have had enough. Surely they won't allow it to go backwards after so much hard work to bring peace!

In San Salvador McCullin was to fall through a roof as he followed fighters going to battle, a fall that left him with serious injuries. This kept him from being able to hold a camera for a year. The war in El Salvador was at times overlooked by the British press due to the Falkland conflict. McCullin fought hard to get it the recognition he felt it deserved.
Don McCullin also tried to go to the Falklands, but was refused permission with the argument there was no space for him. This is was what finally helped bring an end to his war work. The excuses for not letting him, and other good photojournalists, from going , were lame to say the least. But this was also perhaps a time when government attitudes to war photography changed. Soldiers had always been welcoming of photographers on the front line. They were pleased that the world could see what was happening, but this was also seen as much of the reason many in the USA turned against the Vietnam war. It was close up, it was horrific, and it helped show the futility of fighting such a determined enemy so far from home. Governments see photographers as the enemy!

It was with some relief that i finally came to the end of the exhibition. A few of his brooding landscapes helped take away some of the horror, and to see a video from just a few years ago when McCullin went to Africa with Christian aid. He'd photographed people there with AIDS a few years before, people who had no access to medicines that could give them a fairly normal life. On his return he gave a photograph he'd taken to a child who's mother had died. The child framed it and it made him happy to have something of his mother. Then he got to meet another mother and her children. She'd been unable to look after her children before, but with medicine she was now able to be a mother again. He said it's the first time he'd ever enjoyed pressing the shutter. That says so much about his life in wars.

Don McCullin has said how his life has been shaped by war, he's said that it was like an addiction to war. Wherever  there was conflict he felt he had to go. He's talked of the effect it's had on him. How haunted must be his dreams. To see such horror, bodies ripped apart, to smell the blood and death, to feel the fear. How terrible it must have been.
People are only now talking of the effects on soldiers in war, Post Traumatic Stress is now accepted as a real problem. How many soldiers suffer serious depression? How many become alcoholics or turn to drugs? How many end up on the streets? The numbers are many! But what about the journalists? What about those who just had a helmet and cameras? Don McCullin and his like are owed such gratitude for their uncompromising dedication, for putting their lives on the line to show us the reality of war. As a photographer i wonder if i would have had the guts, strength, and ability to survive such awful experiences. I have such admiration for those who have given so much of themselves to get the truth out in way of photographs. It's such an amazingly powerful medium!

Throughout the exhibition i had to keep wiping tears from my eyes. The imagery is quite relentless. It's a wonderful exhibition, but also quite awful in it's brilliance. If someone views this exhibition and doesn't feel like crying, then i don't believe they have truly looked at it, or that they're simply not human!

As i walked away i was left with just one question. After all he's seen, all the years of horror he's been through, how does Don McCullin survive?? How does he live with it all in his mind?? I honestly don't know if i could!!