Exhibition
From Friday 8 May - Sunday 27 September 2009 in Gallery Two, The National Media Museum presents Don McCullin's personal vision of England, in photographs taken over a 50-year career. Raw, powerful, compassionate images of an England where the line between the wealthy and the deprived is as defined as ever.
Early Years
The Guv'nors, Finsbury Park, London, 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, Sleeping With Ghosts, 1994
Video: Don talks about his early years
Bradford
Mother and son, Bradford, 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, Sleeping With Ghosts, 1994
Video: Don talks about Bradford
Poverty
East End, London, 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, Sleeping With Ghosts, 1994
Video: Don talks about poverty
Class
Mayfair, London, 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, interviewed in 2009
Video: Don talks about changes in England
People
Bradford, 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, Homecoming, 1979
Landscapes
Towards an Iron Age hill fort, Somerset, 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, Homecoming, 1979