Photographer's Interview: Don McCullin

     Don McCullin has been taking photographs for about 50 years. He worked in the war and photojournalism genre for a while before going into landscape photography.
     McCullin got his start when he took a photo of a London gang, that had been a part of a murder, in 1959. The photo was posted by the Observer the same year.
     He doesn't have a political or social view he's trying to convey, but he does feel that he's wasted his time photographing war. McCullin feels that that kind of photography is useless because there's no benefit to the soldiers when he's standing over them with a camera while they're dying.
     McCullin compares war photography to landscape photography. He likes that, with landscape photography, he doesn't have to ask before taking photographs.
     He's motivated by his imagination, determination, and discovery. He said that he feels that every day is a new day to discover something about himself and the world around him.
     I find McCullin's work to be very compelling because, at least with the war photographs, he is incredibly talented at capturing the feelings and experience of war. His photographs convey the desperation and despair that soldiers endure, which is horribly heart-breaking, but impressive.