Don McCullin - His exhibition at Tate Liverpool (Sept 20 - May 21)

 

Don McCullin is arguably the best known living photographer in Britain today. Few can come close to either his output or the scope of his work. Now in his mid-eighties and still working hard he has covered most genres in his work as a photojournalist and in his own, more gentle work, in later age.

Born into a deprived childhood in London he left school at fifteen and later did his National Service in the RAF, where he discovered photography. and saved for his first Rolleicord camera. Back in London he photographed some local gang members in a bombed out building and was advised to send the pictures to The Observer who promptly published them, setting him on his road through photojournalism, initially with The Sunday Times. He covered homelessness in London, Northern Ireland during The Troubles, The Biafran famine, civil war in Cyprus and most famously Vietnam where his reflective, frank, hard-hitting style caught people's imagination. During this period his attention was always on the people involved, the storytelling, narrative aspects of the situation.

Since then he has photographed the Beatles, travelled widely in Africa and the Middle East where he recorded the ruins of Palmyra prior to ISIS decimating the site (which he later returned to with Dan Cruikshank the historian to record the damage caused for a TV programme) become a CBE and been knighted. A 2012 documentary McCullin by David and Jacqui Morris was nominated for two Baftas.

He now lives in Somerset and has been recording much of his local area in his landscapes which he says "My landscapes are dark. People say: “Your landscapes are almost bordering on warscapes.” I’m still trying to escape the darkness that’s inside me. There’s a lot of darkness in me. I can be quite jovial and jokey and things like that, but when it comes down to the serious business of humanity, I cannot squander other people’s lives." That says much for the humanity of a man who has seen the worst of the world.

Now a new exhibition shows his amazing Tate Britain Retrospective from 2019 at Tate Liverpool. The show opens on 16th September 2020 and runs until 9th May 2021. Tickets must be purchased online and are timed so that the one-way system to help deal with Covid works for the safety of all. Over 250 works assembled over 60 years and all printed by McCullin in his darkroom are on display. Despite visiting the show in Londo I am keen to see it again and look forward to a visit during the run.