The Toll of War Photography

     

                Don McCullin is one of the world's most renowned war photographers, though he takes issue with the title.  He has taken images from wars around the world, from Vietnam to the Congo to Cambodia and the Middle East. Although he has received much recognition for his work in war photography, he has also spoken about the difficulties of seeing, and sharing, such horrible aspects of human nature. After many years photographing combat, McCullin now wants to focus on landscapes of the English countryside; "[t]hat war stuff... I don't even want to print it anymore," he says. "I want to put it right out of my mind."[1]

                McCullin's struggle with his work brings to light a side of war and documentary photography that we do not often think about. Many images of war, or of starving children, natural disasters and acts of terror, are ingrained in our visual lexicon. These images can be hard to take, and photographers often get negative press for taking advantage of war-torn lands, profiting off of others' misery. But how often do we consider the toll that this kind of photography takes on the photographer himself?

                McCullin did not always find his work in war difficult. As a young man, he admits he found war "incredibly exciting,"[2] and compared his thoughts on war to watching a Hollywood film. But during his work in the Vietnam War, in the same battle in which he took his famous of the shell-shocked soldier (above), McCullin seems to have finally been affected by the devastation around him. He came home to England with combat stress. But it wasn't until he was in Biafra in 1969 that he realized he "should have been making people think the images I was making were of things that should be unacceptable in our world. It came to me in a schoolroom being used as a hospital, and I saw 800 children literally dropping down dead in front of me...That turned me away from the Hollywood gung-ho image of the war photographer. It converted me into another person."[3]

                After Biafra, he continued to work as a war photographer, but also began finding solace in his landscapes. These landscapes  still maintain McCullin's recognizable darkness; they are very stark and barren, often taken in winter, with bare trees and bleak fields. Even in his retirement from combat, the impressions of his years spent in war zones is visible in his photographs.

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[1] Mairi Mackay, "Don McCullin's war with guilt." 11 October 2011. http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/08/world/europe/don-mccullin-war-photography/index.html.

[2] Mackay.

[3] Nicholas Wroe, "A life in photography: Don McCullin." 21 May 2010. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/may/22/don-mccullin-southern-frontiers-interview