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DVD release/Available on iPlayer until 6th August
2013
Donald McCullin has taken
photographs of some of the worst human conflicts in the last fifty years.
Starting off as a fairly amateur photographer at a young age, he captured the
gangs that ravaged London in the 50s and 60s, before turning the lens on the international
battles from Africa to Vietnam. In this low-key documentary, McCullin discusses
the photographs he has taken and the horrors he has seen with frankness and
searing honesty.
Punctuated with interviews with
McCullin himself, the documentary follows his life from taking photos in
Finsbury Park to the present day when he takes pictures of the English
countryside. At intervals, information about the conflicts McCullin
photographed appears on screen, with added footage of soldiers and civil war,
with some interviews of McCullin at the actual time. All this alongside the
timelessness of the suffering portrayed in his photographs adds up to make a very
moving documentary about a man who lived his life under fire and in the midst
of some of the worst human tragedies.
McCullin talks bluntly about
knowing the moment as to when to turn the camera away, specifically at a public
execution in Africa where other photographers tried desperately to get the
moment of death. He says how he felt he didn’t have the right to invade the
privacy of the man at his moment of execution. Later, he talks of the dignity
those in suffering still possess, and frequently refers to the question of
humanity. Never does he glorify death, and he speaks humbly of everything he
has seen, and the shame at not being able to help more in the situations.
In the modern day interviews,
McCullin speaks as a philosopher, a man who has seen the worst in humanity but
also recognises the good in the world as well. He seems almost worn by his
experiences, which affected his family life, and speaks with little emotion as
he recounts the horrors of war. This is an incredibly intimate portrait of a
photographer, and it left me feeling a little numb.
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