Biographie

Don McCullin is one of the greatest photographers of conflict in our time. His career has covered much of the latter part of the twentieth century - a relentlessly photographed century steeped in conflict.

His photographs reveal a ravaged northern England, wars in Cyprus, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia and Beirut, riots in Derry, and famine and disease in Bangladesh. All are photographed with unswerving compassion. As resonant as some of Goya's most terrifying imagery, collectively McCullin's photographs constitute one of the great documents of human conflict and its attendant grief, expressed with a visual lyricism that allows us to glimpse the unbearable.

BIOGRAPHY

1935 Born in London. His father was an invalid. The family lived off Tottenham Court Road, in King's Cross, and then in Finsbury park.
1940 Evacuated to Somerset.
1946 Failed the eleven-plus examination and went to Tollington Park Secondary Modern School.
1949 Won a trade art scholarship to the Hammersmith School of Arts and Crafts and Buildings. His father died, aged forty, and he was forced to find work to earn money for the family. He became a pantry boy on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway dining cars, travelling between London and Manchester.
1950 Worked as a messenger boy for W.M.Larkins, a cartoon animation studio, in Mayfair.
1954 Called for national service and joined the R.A.F. Posted to the Canal Zone in Suez where he became a photo assistant. This was followed by postings in Kenya and Cyprus. Acquired his first camera, a Rolleicord, which he later pawned for £5.
1959 One of his acquaintances from a north London gang, The Guvnors, was tried for the murder of a policeman and executed. Brought his photographs of The Guvnors to the Observer and his first work was published.
1961 Flew to berlin, without an assignment, to photograph the building of the Wall. Won a British press award.
1964 Recieved his first international assignment for the Observer, to photograph the war in Cyprus, for which he received the World Press Photo Award. Awarded the Warsaw Gold Medal. Sent to the Congo to cover the rebellion by supporters of the murdered President Lumumba. Entered Stanleyville disguised as a mercenary.
1965 Commissioned by the Illustration London News to Vietnam, who promptly lost the negatives.
1966 Joined the Sunday Times Magazine where he stayed for eighteen years.
1967 Arrived in Jerusalem during the Six Day War.
1968 Arrived in Vietnam and covered the fighting in the Citadel in Hue during the Tet Offensive. Later in the year he photographed in Czechoslovakia, Biafra and Cuba. He also phographed the Beatles.
1969 His assignments included documenting the genocide of the Brazilian Indians.
1970 Photographed in New Guinea. Wounded in Cambodia.
1971 Photographed the refugees in Bangladesh, victims of floods and cholera.
1974 Photographed the steel works in Consett, County Durham.
1975 Worked in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, before the fall of the city to the Khmer Rouge.
1976 Photographed the civil war in Beirut.
1977 Awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society.
1980 First Major retrospective exhibition, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
1984 First visited the Mentawai Islands off the coast of Sumatra to photograph the isolated tribespeople with his younger son, Aleander, and Mark Shand. He retrned the following year to photograph in Irian Jaya.
1993 Awarded a C.B.E. Recieved an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bradford. Given the Dr Erich Salomon Award in Germany.
1994 Awarded an Honorary Degree by the Open University.
1999 Received a Kaiser Foundation Award to photograph the victims of AIDS in Africa.
2000 AIDS photographs exhibited at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London and at the United Nations in New York.
2001 Published 'Don McCullin', lifetime works, by Jonathon Cape Publishers.