The Landscape

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There’s a shadow that comes over my life when I think […] that I’ve earned my reputation out of other people’s downfall. After a career documenting conflict for over sixty years, iconic war photographer Don McCullin now focuses on documenting the landscape. He has talked openly in the past about the guilt that comes with taking such photos – that you are ‘stealing’ people’s stories, that you are watching as they suffer or even die in front of you – and the manipulation involved in their selection and presentation to audiences. the book and photography are breathtaking, what makes it all so much more extraordinary is that this war photographer photographed most of these incredible landscapes near his home.

On the way, he describes how he’s planting trees – poplars, chestnuts, walnuts and limes – in the valley beneath his house.Stieglitz was of German-Jewish origin, a fact that prompts McCullin to remark on how many of the photographers and picture editors he encountered early on in his career were from similar backgrounds; refugee intellectuals who brought European modernism with them to London. Unsurprisingly, a darkness pervades the images, and he says some people are confused about whether he is trying to frighten them or bring them pleasure. McCullin has been taking landscape photographs since the 1990s, capturing scenes from across the United Kingdom, Europe, and Asia when not on assignment.

This countryside gave him refuge during World War II, when he and other children were evacuated there from London during the Blitz. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his repeated views of the glories of Palmyra and of the destruction of this ancient Syrian city. A master printer, he tears up scores of prints he considers inferior, because ‘When I die I don’t want people to find prints that aren’t good enough. McCullin’s lens extends across the United Kingdom, documenting pensive rural scenes that include Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland; the River Cam, Cambridgeshire; Rannoch Moor and Glencoe, Scotland.He has documented Roman ruins in North Africa and the Levant, including the recent deliberate destruction of the ancient site of Palmyra in Syria by ISIS. Some of McCullin’s recent landscapes include photographs from his ongoing “Southern Frontiers” series. The darkroom that sits in a barn behind McCullin’s house is where as much of the photographer’s energy goes as in the field.