Don McCullin: A rare snapshot of England's battlegrounds
Don McCullin is one of our greatest living photographers. Best known for his war photography, McCullin also recorded striking images of England. Nick Ahad on a celebration of his work.
LONDON born and bred, coming to the National Media Museum in Bradford is still something of a homecoming for Don McCullin.
When he talks about some of the famous photographs he took in Bradford, he references the city in the same way that a local might.
"I was up in the Manningham Lane area," and "I was driving down Lumb Lane and there's a scrapyard on the left hand side". If it wasn't for the accent, you'd guess he was a true Bradfordian.
McCullin, born in 1935, should never have become one of the world's great photographers.
By his own admission he should have been like the friends he grew up with: "Like a limpet clinging to an awful background." Undiagnosed as dyslexic until he was an adult, McCullin was an art school drop out, forced to leave school to support his family when his father died.
It was in 1953, when he was called up for national service, that his life took a turn which led to the extraordinary.
"I didn't want to go into the Army so I went in the RAF and I told them that I worked in a film studio – truth was I was just a messenger boy , but I didn't tell them that," says McCullin.
"I was sent to the photographic unit, but that was just painting film cans.
Someone told me I should volunteer to go abroad to get out of there so I did and was sent to a photographic unit in Egypt, mainly reconnaissance work. I wanted to train to be a photographer, but I failed the RAF tests." McCullin had asked someone to buy him a camera while he was abroad, which cost him 30.
"When I came back to London I had this camera but no use for it, so I pawned it." In one of those strange twists of fate, McCullin's mother redeemed the camera from the pawn shop for 5.When he returned from service, McCullin picked up his old life and continued to hang around with the gangs he had grown up with and worked in a Mayfair photography studio. He says simply: "It was a violent life." He took the main image on this page at the bottom of the street where he lived of some of the other young men who made up the gangs he used to hang around with.
The photographic workshop where he worked suggested he show it to the Observer, so, with the arrogance of youth, he took the photograph to the newspaper's offices.
"They asked me if I took the photograph, I said yes, they asked if I'd do some more and they published the photograph and gave me 50 – a king's ransom.
"I was suddenly being ordained as a photographer.
"I knew nothing about photography, photojournalism, anything, but I knew that having my name in the paper and someone giving me 50 was very exciting." He set about educating himself in photography and the rest, literally, is history.
He was set to work by many of the national newspapers and, in 1966, joined the staff of The Sunday Times.
He photographed The Beatles, Antonioni's Blow-Up and farther afield he began the war photography which turned him into a legend.
His bravery (some say foolhardiness) meant that he got the shots other photographers couldn't.
One of his cameras was destroyed by a bullet meant for him.
Returning to Britain, he ventured north to capture the country in the Seventies and came back with a series of extraordinary images which were collected together to become the 1979 book Homecoming.
The photographs of Bradford through the Seventies capture a side of Britain that needed someone from McCullin's background to first understand and then immortalise on film.
He says: "It's given me more pleasure to photograph in England than anywhere else because the people in these photographs are very poor and I think I'm trying to become a social voice or conscience – there's nobody dying in these pictures but the quality of life is as bad as you can get.
"My own background prepared me for recognition, I didn't need to know about poverty when I came to Bradford or when I went to see people dying of Aids in Africa – I've been there in terms of the social tragedy of life's poor people. That's where I started and really it was the very best place for me to grow up because it taught me about the price of the struggle of humanity.
"I didn't need any tutoring in the human scale of those who have and those who haven't." That trained eye helped him when it came to capturing the realities of Bradford's poor.
"The incredible thing about Bradford is that – well, you can see from the photographs here, all the pictures are inside pictures.
"That's where you say to the people, 'Can I come in and photograph' and not only would they let you, they would drag you in.
"It was like manna from heaven. It was a gift and the great thing about Bradford in those days was you never saw other photographers doing the work I was doing.
"Bradford never let me down photographically." Back for the launch of Don McCullin – In England, a new exhibition at the National Media Museum, the ageing photographer finds that, once again, the city comes up to the mark photographically.
"I have an endless passion and here I am today where they've got some of the finest collections in the world and I have had the joy of looking through the work of all of my heroes this morning," he says.
"I've travelled 260 miles up the road to get here and I've had a great time in the museum – it just reinforces my love of and passion for photography. Actually, the word passion is where I'm really involved in photography."
Don McCullin – In England at the National Media Museum, Bradford, to Sept 27.
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