Shaped by war

Don McCullin is known as one of the greatest war photographers of our generation, over the last 50 years his black and white pictures have introduced the world to people whose lives have been ripped apart by war. It is daunting and emotional looking at these photographs, but photographers like McCullin are there to make people realise the devastation that humans cause in the name of war.

The collection, Shaped by War on display at the Imperial War Museum until the 15^th April, exhibits McCullin’s work ranging from 1961 to 1991. After spending the better part of my morning in a world that McCullin made possible for people like me to witness, albeit decades after the events occurred, I left the exhibition with so many questions I would like to ask the photographer. The next best thing to interviewing McCullin was someone who worked with him solely regarding his work and his feelings and that would be none other than the curator of the exhibition Hilary Roberts who has worked with McCullin for the last 3 years.

The photographs that seem to have had the most effect on me as they are still on my mind days after seeing them are of a family in Karantina, Beirut in 1976. McCullin photographed women and children being led out of their home by Christian Phalangists, minutes later McCullin witnessed the men of the family being executed. McCullin of course is sensitive enough to not have taken pictures of the men being shot but it is hard to take in that McCullin was present when something so tragic happened, I wondered how someone can walk away from something like this. Naturally this was the first question I asked Hilary. “Don was shocked to the core and he remembers thinking how every day is different but that particular day was a terrible day. That war in Beirut was a civil war and civil wars are particularly savage.” Hilary also pointed something out to me that will affect me in my career and it is advice that I have taken on board: “…as Don said he hated working with the Phalangists and he very quickly could not believe that men like them called themselves Christians, but to fulfill your duty as a war photographer access is the most important part of your job…”, and with this I realised what lies ahead of me and the decisions and people I will have to work with to move forward. 

In the 50 years that Don has been photographing, to me he has fulfilled a duty that not many people would take on, he may not be able to stop war, poverty and human devastation but that is not the point. He has campaigned more than any other person I can think of, by giving people most affected by our world’s most terrible events, notice in the rest of the world’s eyes. It is through his pictures that awareness and understanding in everyone who sees them is created.