This book was a Christmas present a couple of years ago, as I have mentioned earlier in the course I have admired Don McCullin’s work for many years and it what I thought brought me into photography many years ago.
At it heart, this is a chronological collection of McCullins greatest work, from his beginning in the streets of London and the construction of the Berlin Wall through his iconic images of Vietnam, Biafra and beyond. It’s simply put together the only narratives is the introduction and an essay Witnessing by Susan Sontag. It just lets the images speak for themselves.
The cover is a cropped version of one of he most iconic war shot of all time the Shell Shocked US soldier in Vietnam, and this alludes to treasures that are inside.
MUcCillins photography is compelling because is is close to the subject, the opening line of the introduction is “Don McCullin has the bottle.” And I feel this sums up his approach; I would say capra-esque, but he is closer than that there is an empathy within the images that he has produced. These is little of what could be termed voyeurism.
Sontag in here essay as the title suggests refers to the witnessing, how “upsetting photographshave the quality of being memorable – this unforgetable”.
The images in the book are all black and white; I feel that strengthens ever images – there are no distractions to the story being told with the pictures where it be a hurried shot taken while under fire in the Mekong Delta in 1970 or portraits taken of tribespeople in rural Indonesia.
Overall this is a powerful body of work and overpowering thing I will take away from this book is summed up by Sontag in this quote:
“A photograph can’t coerce. It won’t do the moral work for us. But it can start us on the way.”
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