'Photography isn’t 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.
The exhibition consisted of around 50 black and white, silver gelatin prints, displayed, in three categories.The exhibition is quite refreshing in the sense that it avoids McCullin's well regarded war photography, taking a broader view of his lifelong career. The photographs depict the impoverished, the homeless, the underprivileged.
The first selection of photographs depicts Berlin, in 1961. A city troubled by the uncomfortable coexistence of military occupation and everyday life. A little girl held in the arms of her mother eyes the artillery lying across the cobbles. A woman leans casually alongside a tank parked on the street of the gritty metropolis as the wall is going up. There is a lot of looking and staring going on.
We then move from East Berlin to East London: the harsh reality of life for the poor in post-war Britain is unveiled. A homeless filthy Irishman looks you straight in the eye and there is no way you can escape the human connection. That is what McCullin does, he looks at people with dignity and not in a clichéd kind of way, he captures their essence and lets their eyes meet your eyes.
There is so much going on in these photographs it’s perplexing: sadness, courage, hope, admiration, melancholy, confusion. The latest sequences show eloquent rural landscapes. During his later career McCullin distances himself from the image of war photographer. These landscapes are reflective spaces, but with as much dark undertone and subjectivity as his previous works.
Don McCullin is on at the Tate Britain until 4th March 2012
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