I came across this fascinating podcast interview with British photojournalist legend, Don McCullin - one of rather few British photojournalists that I really admire! Very honestly, he talks about his work, mostly as a war photojournalist, and about how splintered he actually feels about it now, if you can say it that way. Some amazing food for thought here! It’s more than an hour long, but well worth the time to listen! A couple of memorable quotes from the podcast (not exact word-for-word, but still):

First, I love the simple way his career started: He went into the office of The Observer, asked to see the editor, showed him one photo, got hired for an assignment, got published and then “the phone didn’t stop ringing… I was offered every job in England you can think of, television work, newspaper contracts…” – sounds like a dream!

And about war photojournalism :
“It was definitely an addiction… loved the excitement… people were being killed around me, I was thinking about my career as a photographer, it was all very selfish…”

“I never believed in religion. Only when I got into tight corners”
– to explain his first war fix. He thought the exhaust pipe had fallen of his car, went out to have a look and found out it was people shooting all around him!

Then he “started getting covers and 10 pages for my photos… my inferiority complex vanished… I’d always been unsure about myself, looked to other great photographers…”

“in my work I’ve never been punched by a man. I did get punched once by a woman in Beirut… I deserved it… She came around the corner and saw an apartment block collapse like a club sandwich… her family was in it… I heard the screaming… she came roaring at me and I took the most amazing blurs… I was holding on to my Nikon with a gun in my face… ordered a coffee… another bomb went of and killed the woman”.

“I was in Magnum for one year… didn’t like it… they all have their Leicas over their shoulders as if it’s something they can’t be seen without… I don’t want to go around like father Christmas covered in cameras… I like observing humanity without the feeling of being on duty… I’m interested in what’s happening in front of me…”

But also says :

“I got fired from the Sunday Times after nearly 20 years because the editor didn’t want my photos of starving children next to images of garden furniture and Volkswagens… he wanted the magazine to be an uplifting experience.”

“Photography has eaten most of my life, ruined it in some ways… you wave goodbye an awful lot… eventually there’s no wife and children…” although at the end of the interview “I have found happiness because I’ve met a beautiful woman who’s 30 years younger than me - That helps!”

“There were twinges of romanticism in what I did… I thought the pictures I took of war and starvation would change something… it’s been a total flop… I wished I had been a doctor in those places (Africa), would have been much more useful…”

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Never hurts to think about the reasons we are in this “business”, the sacrifices we pay… And is it really true that we can’t change anything with a photo? We may not stop wars and starvation, but I think even my photos have changed something…