Don McCullin Quotes & Sayings

I've spent most of my life embracing violence in wars and revolutions. Even a famine is a form of violence. Because I photograph people in peril, people in pain, people being executed in front of me, I find it very difficult to get my head around the art narrative of photography. — Don McCullin

I've always thought photography is not so much of an art form but a way of communicating and passing on information. — Don McCullin

I feel shabby - because I've made a name, quite a good name, out of photography. And I still find myself asking the same questions: Who am I? What am I supposed to be? What have I done? — Don McCullin

Many people misunderstand me - I'm quite happy to be called a photographer. All of a sudden, the art world has caught up with photography, and they are trying to hijack us. — Don McCullin

I've seen my own blood and broken a few bones. I've been hit, which isn't an entirely bad thing, as at least you have a glimpse of the suffering endured by the people you are photographing. And in a sense, crumbling empires and war have been with me all my life. — Don McCullin

I'm from England, and like every other great empire who stole bits of the world, there is a price to pay. And I was born in 1935. So, since I've been conscious of the world, I've either been in, or been on the periphery of, a war zone. — Don McCullin

You cannot walk on the water of hunger, misery, and death. You have to wade through to record them. — Don McCullin

I couldn't possibly have any regrets, because I've been very lucky, I've been celebrated, and I've survived. I couldn't have one single regret. That would be absurd. — Don McCullin

There's nothing I don't know about war. The stench of it. But I say that without any pride. War is a terrible thing. My hope is that you'll get that through looking at one of my pictures. — Don McCullin

I treat my life as though I am on a tightrope. — Don McCullin

Photography isn't about seeing, it's about feeling. If I don't have some kind of feeling for what I'm shooting, how can I expect the person who looks at it to feel anything? — Don McCullin

I have more of a relationship with the subject than I do with my camera equipment. To me, camera equipment is like a tin of shoe polish and a brush - I use that as a tool, but my basic camera is my emotion and my eyes. It's not anything to do with the wonderful cameras I use. — Don McCullin

I am a professed atheist, until I find myself in serious circumstances. Then I quickly fall on my knees, in my mind if not literally, and I say : 'Please God, save me from this.' — Don McCullin

I have been manipulated, and I have in turn manipulated others, by recording their response to suffering and misery. So there is guilt in every direction: guilt because I don't practice religion, guilt because I was able to walk away, while this man was dying of starvation or being murdered by another man with a gun. And I am tired of guilt, tired of saying to myself: I didn't kill that man on that photograph, I didn't starve that child. That's why I want to photograph landscapes and flowers. I am sentencing myself to peace. — Don McCullin

I've fallen in love with the classical world of imagery, and what I'd like to do now over the last bit of my life is to photograph some nudes. — Don McCullin

I know where I'm coming from; I know what I bring and what I take. I take more than I bring; I bring hope, but I give nothing. That's not the role I'm proud of. — Don McCullin

I want to be the toughest photographer in the world. — Don McCullin

Sometimes it felt like I was carrying pieces of human flesh back home with me, not negatives. It's as if you are carrying the suffering of the people you have photographed. — Don McCullin

Most of the people I know, their marriages went down the drain, like mine - something I am not proud of. — Don McCullin

Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see is what my life is all about. — Don McCullin

Photography has been very, very generous to me, but at the same time has damaged me. — Don McCullin

I love photography. I love the imagery. I love what I do. — Don McCullin

America has never taken me to its heart. I've always been an outsider. — Don McCullin

Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me. — Don McCullin

Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures. — Don McCullin

I don't want to die for a few pictures. I want to live for every sunrise I can clap my eyes on; I want to see my family get older; I want to see the world try and get a bit more peaceful and understanding, which unfortunately I don't think I'll ever see. — Don McCullin

The real truth of life is on the streets. Photograph the daily lives of people, and how they exist, and how they fight for space and time and pleasure. — Don McCullin

I have a dark room, and I still process film, but digital photography can be a totally lying kind of experience; you can move anything you want ... the whole thing can't be trusted, really. — Don McCullin

There's always a threat surrounding the things you love — Don McCullin

I think media has lost its way. We must recognize that the proprietors of these organizations have put on a form of censorship. Basically, they're more interested in celebrity, narcissism, rich people, good-looking people, and successful sportsmen. — Don McCullin

Many people send me letters in England saying, 'I want to be a war photographer,' and I say, go out into the community that you live in. There's wars going on out there; you don't have to go halfway around the world on an airplane where there are bombs and shells. There are social wars that are worthwhile. — Don McCullin

Every street in London has a camera, and if you ever travel up the M4, it feels as if George Orwell should be your chauffeur. — Don McCullin

When I take a black-and-white portrait, it's not particularly meant to please you. It's meant to talk to you; it's meant to shame you. It's meant to scream out at you, and it has a message. — Don McCullin

I only use a camera like I use a toothbrush. It does the job. — Don McCullin

I am sometimes accused by my peers of printing my pictures too dark. All I can say is that it goes with the mood of melancholy that is induced by witnessing at close quarters such intractable situations of conflict and joylessness. — Don McCullin

I started out on photography accidentally. A policeman came to a stop at the end of my street, and a guy knifed him at the end of my street. That's how I became a photographer. I photographed the gangs that I went to school with. — Don McCullin

Photography is the truth if it's being handled by a truthful person. — Don McCullin

I have a store full of thousands and thousands of images in my brain. I've got this terrible feeling I'm like some abattoir boss: I know death; I know the cut pieces of the human body. — Don McCullin

I was dyslexic and uneducated and left school at 14. I grew up in Finsbury Park, which was a pretty bad place where you had to fight and be beaten. It was just a constant roundabout of violence. — Don McCullin

I grew up as a boy with aggression. — Don McCullin

Photography's a case of keeping all the pores of the skin open, as well as the eyes. A lot of photographers today think that by putting on the uniform, the fishing vest, and all the Nikons, that that makes them a photographer. But it doesn't. It's not just seeing. It's feeling. — Don McCullin

In my photography, I always lean towards the underprivileged because that's where I came from. When I went to the wars, I attempted to go and stand by those who were being trodden on. By that, I mean people like the Palestinians. When I go to India, I see really the poorest people, and I tend to be drawn to them. — Don McCullin