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NOVEMBER 2015 _ PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY _ 9ullin
If you hadn’t become a photographer, what would you have been?
“That’s an impossible question to answer because way back in those days, I had no trade. I worked in a small darkroom in
Mayfair copying line drawings, but that would have been the
death of me had my life not turned out the way it has. I’ve travelled continuously around the world, and to the most
extraordinary events. When I was young, I wasn’t educated
enough and I wasn’t aware like the way I became aware once I started travelling. They say, ‘Travel broadens the mind’.”
Have any photographers inspired you?“Previous great photographers like Eugene Smith, Stieglitz,
Steichen and Lartigue – a whole list of names. They’re men of the
distant past, and they’re men who have shaped my love of photography in a classical way; not so much the way I’ve turned
out to be in photographing war. But I’ve arrested that war stuff,
and in my own spare time, in between assignments for Sunday Times, I went and did landscape and foreign travel, which The
I paid for. I went to places like Irian Jaya and parts of Africa. The
prev ious g ia nts i n photog raphy helped to shape my li fe.”
Which assignment was the most memorable of your career?
“The most important one was the Tet Offensive in 1968 in
Vietnam, because it was on such a major scale. The battle I was in went on for two solid weeks, during which I could see a really
powerful image in any direction I turned. It was as if somebody
had laid it on for me totally, which is not true, of course.”
You’ve said that you’ve had a love af fair with photography?
“A love affair means total dedication. It was as if I was almost like a kind of alcoholic – it was the same attachment. Photography
made me a totally dedicated martyr and follower; therefore
I would never cut corners in my darkroom or in the field where I was working in terrible places: in Beirut, terrible famines in
Africa. I would wait, be patient and be very respectful andTo mark the 80th birthday of legendary
photojournalist Don McCullin, his
autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour and
retrospective photo book Don McCullin have
been updated and re-published. Just before
this landmark birthday he spoke to us about
his career and current projectsDon McCullin CBE was born in London in October 1935. After one
of his pictures was published in The Observer newspaper in 1959
he went on to build an outstanding career as a photojournalist, mainly
covering conflict, primarily for Sunday Times Magazine, before The
moving on to shoot commercial, portrait, travel and landscape
photos. Now shooting digitally, he lives in Somerset with his wife,
Catherine, and youngest son, MaxRoger Askew / REX ShutterstockSUBSCRIBE TODAY http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/prophoto15