Don McCullin: The photos we can’t look away from

Don McCullin: The photos we can’t look away from Don McCullin/Tate As a new exhibition of work by Don McCullin opens in London, Fiona Macdonald takes a look at gripping images of war and poverty by one of Britain’s greatest living photographers. That’s the only place to be if you’re going to see and show what suffering really means… Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see, is what my life as a war photographer is all about.” Don McCullin/Tate Grenade Thrower, Huế, Vietnam, 1968: the Battle of Huế was one of the longest and bloodiest in the Vietnam War A photo taken in Vietnam in 1968 reveals a man launching an object into the air, striking uneasy parallels with images of athletes. One of McCullin’s photos, showing young boys running away from CS gas fired by British soldiers and jumping over a graffiti-covered wall, looks eerily like a photo from a battlefield trench. “Often they are atrocity pictures… But I want to create a voice for the people in those pictures, I want the voice to seduce people into actually hanging on a bit longer when they look at them, so they go away not with an intimidating memory but with a conscious obligation.” Don McCullin/Tate Homeless Irishman, Spitalfields, London, 1970: in a 2012 documentary, McCullin recalled thinking this man looked like Neptune as he photographed him And McCullin has documented other types of battleground. “I don’t want to encourage people to think photography is only necessary through the tragedy of war.” His photo of a homeless Irishman, taken in London in 1970, is one of his best-known images.