Saturday, July 19, 2014

Quotes: Don McCullin

"Of course I came in for a lot of criticism, some of it very hurtful. There is a certain mercenary element in what I've done that does disturb me., but the rights and wrongs of the situation are not as simple as some people make out. I have recorded what some human beings have done to others. Is it better that we let these things happen and there is no witness, nothing to show us what is actually gong on? People sometimes fail to understand how much the photographer himself is emotionally disturbed by what he photographs. They think that all war photographers are just ruthless and relentless. But some of the pictures of mine that they saw a couple of years ago have probably stopped hurting them - they are still hurting me."

"My photography's an expression - of my guilt, my inability to make a protest in another way."

"I can't describe how I feel when I've had a good day photographing people, having met and talked to them and had their cooperation. It's as if somebody's given me an enormous present; I go home as if I've got a full belly."

“I’m alone in my house in Somerset. The ghosts in my filing cabinets sometimes seem to mock me – the ghosts of all those dead in all those wars”