Don Mc Cullin

I met him at a lunch in London two or three years ago. He is an extraordinary person, who wears his inner scars, like his deeply lined and handsome face, quite openly. I find him completely engaging. I was at school in the Somerset landscape in which he lives and of which he has made hundreds of darkly brooding prints, and know it well, and we shared reminicsenses. He was very generous with his time.

I missed his Tate retrospective a few years ago, but attended his 2016 show at H&W in Bruton. His prints are so powerful that it is quite impossible to remain unmoved. In fact my companion was unable to stay in the room for the tears that came involuntarily. That is the power of which truly great photography is capable, and serves as constant inspiration, even if one has no hope of achieving such heights. .
 
If photography did heroes he is mine, and whilst I am not fit to shine his photographic shoes, his dark prints are my own inspiration for my choice of creating dark black and white.
I managed to get a secondhand copy of his book Homecoming years ago for £26 and it was a revelation.
 
I recall going to see a display of some of his pictures in London a few years ago.

I hadn’t realised that in addition to his war picture did lots of other stuff too. I particularly remember his photos of post-war London bomb sites and the people living around them.
 
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