On this episode, a remarkable interview with arguably Britain’s greatest living photographer. Sir Don McCullin opens up about his career in-and-out of war zones, saying he has been “damaged” by some of the things he saw in Vietnam, Biafra and elsewhere, and that he was “poisoned” by his profession. He talks about some of his most dramatic photos and about feeling like he was “stealing” images of suffering. The legendary photographer also analyses the craft of modern war photography in an age of heavily restricted battlefield access as well as citizen journalists.
Plus, Lionel dissects the latest in the battle to own the Telegraph and Alan updates us about his quest to find out if there was interference from a BBC director and the government in who would become chair of the media regulator Ofcom.
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Media Confidential is a podcast from Prospect.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Alan Rusbridger:
This episode has been sponsored by Q5, a global management consultancy that helps companies and public bodies improve their organisational health. If you'd like to find out more about Q5, please visit Q5partners.com.
Hello, and welcome to Media Confidential, Prospect Magazine's weekly dive into the fascinating and contested world of media, speaking to key figures in an international industry. I'm Alan Rusbridger.
Lionel Barber:
And I'm Lionel Barber. On this episode, a remarkable interview with arguably Britain's greatest living photographer, as Sir Don McCullin opens up about his career in and out of war zones.
Rusbridger:
He says he's been damaged by some of the things he's seen, talks about feeling as though he's stealing images of suffering, and gives us his reaction to the horrors of continuing conflicts.
Don McCullin:
I feel as in a way, I've wasted the last 50 years of my life, really. But because as soon as one war is finished, there is another one waiting in the wings. Because there has been the Ukraine, there was Aleppo, there is now this terrible scene in the Middle East.
Barber:
It's an extraordinary interview. Listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. And Media Confidential is on X/Twitter. We are @mediaconfpod.
Rusbridger:
So, Lionel, we're both in London. What have you been monitoring?
Barber:
Well, I've been watching very closely the coverage of the bid for the Telegraph Group. Quite struck, by the way Lord Moore, formerly Charles Moore, editor of The Telegraph, Spectator, and Daily Telegraph, has really framed the debate by labelling the bid by RedBird, which is an American investment firm, and IMI, which is Abu Dhabi's Royal Family's Investment Group. He's framed this as a state takeover by Abu Dhabi of Britain's conservative newspapers. And really, that's led the debate, and you've had all sorts of, by the way, interested parties, because Rupert Murdoch would like to buy The Spectator and the Daily Mail, certainly would like to buy the Telegraph group. They've all been very critical, all focusing on Abu Dhabi and not the American group.
Rusbridger:
It's difficult, isn't it, to disentangle those interests? I mean, The Times occasionally declares an interest. I noticed today where according on Tuesday, they said Rupert Murdoch is said to be interested, like they couldn't pick up the phone and ask him. But there was not the similar level of interest or disapproval when Saudi money came into the Independent, or Russian influence arguably came into the Independent. And of course, The Times is owned by an American citizen who changed his nationality from Australian. So it's a of difficult area, but I can see the problem with Abu Dhabi.
Barber:
I think the key point here is that while The Telegraph Group has been owned by Conrad Black, had his legal difficulties, Barclay brothers walking bankrupts for more than a decade, the fact is that the big money in this bid, said to be maybe three quarters of the 700 million pounds or so, is coming from Abu Dhabi, the Royal family. It's the government. It's not a private sector individual.
Rusbridger:
And of course, it's so important to the right, because The Telegraph is effectively the House Journal of the Conservative Party or the right, whether that's represented by the Conservative Party nowadays or not. But they would feel anxious, I think, about it being outside the sphere of influence.
Barber:
So this poses something of a dilemma for the government. You have the culture secretary minded to refer the American Abu Dhabi bid to the competition authorities, but the foreign office is worried about antagonising an important ally, the UAE in the Gulf, very rich, big investor in the UK. And I think Rishi Sunak, I wouldn't be surprised if he too is concerned. UAE was at his big investment conference this week in London, Hampton Court. The way this bid is going is that the Abu Dhabi Americans who looked to be in the catbird seat, having put money on the table, ready to repay this huge loan owned by the Barclay Brothers to Lloyds Bank. They're actually now... I think they've lost ground. The winds are blowing in favour of a referral. I think.
Rusbridger:
It kind of means there are no good options. I don't think Paul Marshall on the strength of his ownership of GB News is a terrific option. I don't think it's great that the Daily Mail might be a candidate, because that leads to huge plurality issues. Rupert Murdoch owning The Spectator after what he's done with Fox News. So I mean each of the bids comes with problems, but it sounds like it could take weeks, if not months, for this bid to land.
Barber:
The one thing that could change the equation is that the Americans, and by the way, Jeff Zucker, formerly Head of CNN, formerly ran the Today Show on NBC, very experienced media executive, he's fronting the American side of this bid. I understand that they really are ready to put cast iron guarantees on editorial independents for the Telegraph Group, should they win. Will that be enough? We've seen offers or promises of editorial guarantees go up in smoke in the previous era, haven't we?
Rusbridger:
We have, including with Rupert Murdoch. But that's a different story. I've been continuing to monitor the-
Barber:
You won't let go, I know that.
Rusbridger:
I won't let go. There's the story of the BBC director, Robbie Gibb, who once denied the story, worked in concert with aides at No 10 to try and fix the chairmanship of Ofcom. Why is that wrong? Because it's obviously wrong for the regulated party of the BBC to be trying to pick the regulator. I mean, it's just obviously improper. You'll remember, I first wrote to the BBC two weeks ago about this, and they-
Barber:
There's always a problem with the post in this system.
Rusbridger:
A week ago, I emailed Dame Elan Closs Stephens, who is the BBC's acting chair. I chased it up yesterday, and I'm told I will get a response. But there was a spectacular appearance by Nadine Dorries, who was the culture minister under Boris Johnson on the Iain Dale Programme on LBC, in which Iain pressed her to name the person who she says switched her advice note to the Prime Minister while it was in the red box. And it was the most vicious piece of interrogation I've seen since the Spanish inquisition. Because after 11 seconds, she went from, "I'm never going to say who he is," to naming him. It's just Dougie Smith, this shadowy figure at No 10.
Now, whether that's true or not, I don't know, but it seems to me impossible for the BBC to be maintaining this line that they're just not going to help journalists with their inquiries. I mean, this is what used to be called fact-checking. We're trying to check a story that isn't public domain, and that's what BBC journalists do every day of the year. And for the BBC itself not to take part in fact-checking seems to me unsustainable. But we will see.
Barber:
Well, I love this story, partly because, Alan, this must be one of the first stories you've ever done where Nadine Dorries has been the primary source because you read it in the book.
Rusbridger:
Yeah. She has quite a-
Barber:
But the other, it's a whodunit.
Rusbridger:
It is a whodunit.
Barber:
And I know you're not going to let go of the story, and it is pretty incredible in today's Britain 2023. Here, you have the chair of Ofcom, the most important media regulator, one of the most powerful regulators in the country. You have established, shall we say, links at the highest level in the BBC in the government over the appointment of the chair of Ofcom.
Rusbridger:
Don't forget the special offer, which means you can enjoy Prospect's journalism for a full month, absolutely free. Take advantage of the new one-month free trial offer, and you can read all the magazine's best long reads, commentary and cultural criticism, with new writing added daily to our website, as well as the entire 28-year archive. Sign up now at subscribe.prospectmagazine.co.uk/mediaconfpod.
So Don McCullin is one of our greatest living photographers, photojournalist, war photographer, though he doesn't like being called that. He's now 88. As well as having a retrospective exhibition in Rome, there's a new book of the key photographs from his career. He's been shooting pictures ever since he was about 15 as a poor kid growing up in Finsbury Park. And he really is the iconic capturer of images from war in suddenly in the 20th century in Vietnam and working in dozens of wars after that, initially for The Sunday Times, but also for The Observer and other outlets. Lionel, you overlapped with him at The Sunday Times, I think.
Barber:
Yes, I joined in 1981, he was still around. I'd occasionally see him in the office and take a bow, frankly, because one of the books that I was given by my father, who was also a journalist, in my last year at university was Harry Evans, Five Great Books on Newspaper Journalism. And there was one huge fact book called Pictures on a Page.
Rusbridger:
I had the same book.
Barber:
Isn't it a wonderful book?
Rusbridger:
Fantastic book.
Barber:
And you could study those images. Harry taught us how to crop a picture, how to write a caption. But also, it's the commentary behind the image. And Don McCullin's photographs are in there.
Rusbridger:
It's extraordinary to talk to him. I think his first commission was from The Observer in 1959, aged 23, so it's quite a long career.
Barber:
Well, we recorded this interview with Sir Don McCullin two weeks ago, which is important, because I asked him about what happened that day in Gaza when the Israeli defence forces had invited cameras to view what Israel says it found at the Al-Shifa Hospital. And his response as a celebrated and experienced photojournalist is very interesting.
Rusbridger:
We're joined by Sir Don McCullin, who's published a beautiful book called Life, Death and Everything in Between, which includes images dating back, from my calculation, Don, 62 years starting in 1960. I wanted to ask you about the emotion that you now feel watching war and the images that you are seeing coming out of Israel and Gaza. How do you react as somebody who sees these images, because you know better than anybody what it's like to be in the middle of war?
McCullin:
Well, strangely enough, I've developed a kind of attitude problem regarding my situation. There's nothing worse than being called a war photographer. I inherited photography. I didn't really set out to become a photographer, but I inherited photography. So all the wars and situations I've seen, I feel now... I feel as in a way, I've wasted the last 50 years of my life, really. And because as soon as one war is finished, there is another one waiting in the wings to start. So I feel you preach slightly to the converted, in my case. The people I know and people like yourselves, we all have an aversion to kind fatality of war. But the general public, I don't know how they think about the world and the world they live in. And by the way, as long as there are armament factories producing weapons of war, there will always be war. And as long as there are politicians who can't sit down around the table and work it out that way. There will never be any peace in, well, what's left of my lifetime, and probably future generations to come.
Barber:
Don, I know you don't like talking about yourself, but over the years, and I was privileged to work at The Sunday Times when you were still taking photographs for that newspaper, you produced some of the most memorable images of war, but also the troubles in Northern Ireland, civil disturbance, truly memorable pictures. Today, do you think that it is possible for a photographer of your mould to still make a mark in the age of instant transmission of digital images?
McCullin:
I don't think it's a problem, because of various restrictions, particularly of this war in Israel right now, most of the correspondents are not getting anywhere near the scene over the events. If it wasn't for these people with their iPhones, we wouldn't get any kind of imagery coming out at all of these wars. That happened also in the war in Aleppo. At the end of the war in Aleppo, it was too dangerous for us to cross the border from Turkey, which was always illegal anyway, because there was a danger of being kidnapped by Isis, or one of the warlords and sold on to Isis.
So in the end, the loss of the reportage coming out of the war in Aleppo, in Syria was done by the guys with iPhones. But many of them lost their lives as well. So I think the idea today that people like me who are not covering wars, I don't think it's that important anymore because there will always be somebody there with an iPhone.
Barber:
Well, Don, I hesitate to ask some advice here, but you did prove yourself to be extraordinarily resourceful as a photographer in conflict zones, throwing yourself in the river in the Mekong, with your Nikon camera, still working as the bullets shot past. What kind of advice would you give to journalists and photographers who are trying to cover the story of the Gaza Hospital, which is surrounded and now infiltrated, occupied by Israeli troops? They think Hamas are there, buried. What advice would you give to those journalists?
McCullin:
Well, first of all, you almost answered your own question yourself. They are surrounded, so therefore, it would be impossible to get in from an outsider's point of view. I think the Israelis have always been very careful. They were very cross with me, because I covered the Six-Day War, I was the only journalist in Jerusalem when they captured the city. I wasn't aware of the impact at the time. I was sitting down and an Israeli soldier came to me and said, "What the hell are you sitting down for? You should be at the Wailing Wall." And I thought, "What the hell is he talking about, the Wailing Wall?" So I wasn't totally aware of that moment of tremendous history that I was privileged to see. So I went through these alleyways, and I could see the Wailing Wall and what it meant to Israelis. So it was amazing to be there.
But in this instance now, the Israelis, they've always had the smartest information in the Middle East. They knew more than anything. So right now, they've managed to keep all the journalists out of this Gaza situation. And in many ways, it might be almost to their advantage. With journalists, we're always tenacious and we will always get in if we can get in. It took me weeks and weeks with a friend of mine, Charles Glass, to get into Mosul towards the end of that, and that was a similar situation. A destroyed city town with lots of snipers in windows that can kill you. And was it worth me losing my life to get a picture, a negative? I don't think so, really.
Barber:
Don, the latest news is that the Israelis actually have allowed a limited number of journalists into the hospital. They have produced Kalashnikov's grenades, which they say are stored or were stored in the hospital as part of Hamas forces. So if you were there as a photographer, would you be taking photographs of those weapons caches? And how would you cover that, given that the Israelis have offered conditional access to you?
McCullin:
Well, first of all, I welcome the question really, because only today on the train coming back here to Somerset did I see in the Telegraph the photographs of the very things you're talking about. I had a suspicion about that photograph. I analysed it in my own way and the knowledge I've gathered over the last 60 years. I suspect that those weapons were discarded by the odd Hamas fighter who thought better of losing his life and dumping them. There weren't enough weapons in number in total to convince me that that was a really serious headquarters of Hamas. If it was, you would've seen far greater amounts of ammunition and weaponry. So I thought... I even had doubtful thoughts, whether it wasn't slightly put up, that picture.
But secondly, I think my own vision is that they were probably the few fighters who went there, who'd made up their minds they weren't going to lose their lives, and they dumped those weapons somewhere in the grounds of that hospital. That's just my own personal view. But I'm not really the kind of person to speculate. In a situation of wars, most journalists are meant to be impartial. And therefore, one is meant to concentrate on your job, keep your personal thoughts to yourself on it. And by the way, I was only ever a simple photographer. I never had the wisdom of the many great journalists I worked with. My position there was purely to observe and push that buck.
Rusbridger:
Regretfully, you said you felt much of your work had been wasted because of the futility of continuing war. But I wonder if that's you being fair to yourself. There were images that you produced from Vietnam, from Biafra, and other situations where a single image had a huge impact on shortening a famine or a war. Don't you think that's true?
McCullin:
I've always been a pessimist in my life. I've seen so many terrible tragedies in my life that being an optimist has been an issue with me. Frankly, there are certain pictures I took in the war, that Vietnam War was a very difficult war to cover emotionally, because you felt really that where you also being used by the American, you were given accreditation of a major. So that means you would jump on any arrow. The whole thing was too conveniently at your disposal.
But the covering the Biafra war where one day I walked into a schoolhouse which was converted into a so-called hospital, if you can dare to believe, and there were several hundred dying children looking at me when I walked in. And because they thought, "Oh, here comes old whitey, he's going to bring us some food aid." But no, I didn't. All I brought those children in that terrible scene that day were two Nikon cameras hanging around my neck. So I've always analysed and doubted myself and my position in this weird, strange role that I was meant to be operating under. I was under the cloak of newspapers and things like that. I went there with emotion more than intellect.
Rusbridger:
I can see that that would be a traumatic situation to be placed in. But nevertheless, those pictures, once they went around the world had the effect of dramatically impacting what happened next.
McCullin:
Well, I think it's a good idea that we are there. I mean, one would've felt that it would've been just as important to me to have walked into Birkenau and Auschwitz. It wasn't until it was all over, did we realise the catastrophic scale of this terrible tragedy. It's still the greatest tragedy in the world today. I mean, we don't forget about the Holocaust. We don't forget it, because there are memorials and things to remind us.
But I just don't know how to get through this conversation and not feel that I have wasted my time. Because there has been the Ukraine, there was Aleppo, there is now this terrible scene in the Middle East, which has to be resolved one way or the other. And my only conclusion, disregarding my photographic position, is that people have got to sit down and create a two-state solution. If we could solve this war, maybe we could look to the future in solving other wars. But no, of course, I'm jumping out of my photographic skin. I'm becoming somebody I'm not meant to be. I'm just a man in this journey of humanity who's seeing too many tragedies, and being a photographer seems very unimportant, really.
Rusbridger:
There's one image, a very famous image of you are behind a US marine throwing a grenade in 1968. You are right in the middle of that action at tremendous risk to your own life, and it's very reminiscent of one of the pictures of Robert Capa on D-Day. What drove you to place yourself in such jeopardy to get an image like that?
McCullin:
Well, I wouldn't be telling the truth if I didn't think that there was a streak of ambition in me that said to me, "You would get a great picture." and we were always looking at the Robert Capa picture of the falling soldier in the Spanish Civil War in 1937, which has turned out to be under suspicion of being a hoax. Most photographers I knew who went to or wanted to emulate that picture, they wanted to, which is actually just disrespectful if you think about it. It's really awful to think, "Oh, I'm going to get a better picture than Robert Capa of the falling soldier." Why would I... Why would any of us want to see a man die to give us a great picture?
So there's a moral streak in me that's very uncomfortable, and I think that's the right way it should be. I've always had my own rules in my photographic life, and in that war in Vietnam, in that citadel battle in Grua, I was never a soldier. I would've never been accepted or wanted to be a soldier by the marines that I was with. But one day, I photographed a marine who'd been hit by what they call friendly fire. I don't think there's any fire that's actually friendly when it is when you get hit with one of those M16 bullets that riddles right through your body. So I took this picture of him against the wall, and it looked like Jesus Christ coming from the cross. I mean, it really does. And then I felt incredibly guilty. I took this man away from the battle. I had him on my shoulders, and I ran him away from the battle. And he said when he got finally to Guam, where they sent all the injured out of Vietnam, he wrote his mother a letter and said, "This strange man, this Englishman, took me away from the battle."
So here comes the story, which has taken so long for me to tell you, there is insanity in war, and I think there were moments of insanity that darkened my brain and my soul. And there's no accounting for the way one's mind thinks when you're in a war situation, seeing men dying, men crying, begging for their mothers because they're dying with horrendous... So the whole thing is not negotiable, it's not manageable. And then you asked yourself, "Why am I here?" So when I said previous that I thought nothing good has come of my work in that sense, it's because most of it was clouded by the fog of war.
Barber:
Well, listening to what Don was saying there, it's almost like he's suffering from imposter syndrome. "Why am I here? Am I taking advantage of people by taking that photograph?" At the same time, he's obviously enormously competitive. He wants to be first. And I suppose the other thing is that he's speaking about a different era, isn't he? Where the man or the woman was on the spot, taking the photograph. Now, war is much more controlled, you can see that in the Gaza-Israeli conflict, but also people wandering around with iPhones, taking a completely different kind of photograph.
Rusbridger:
Yeah, yeah. I think he started his career at the sort of high watermark of journalists being able to roam freely around battlefields. I mean, it was extraordinary in Vietnam. Anybody who had a couple of letters from news organisations could get themselves accredited, and then they could roam around the battlefield at will. That was replaced by an era of total control. You remember stories like-
Barber:
Rusbridger:
Well, I was really thinking of the Russian assault on Grozny where they just flattened in entire city. And I would doubt there are any images from that, because there was no way you could get anywhere near them. Then there's the era of embeds where it's all very tightly controlled.
Now, of course, it is the complete opposite. The images coming out of Gaza, taken by what you might call citizen journalists are flooding the internet. There's a remarkable photographer, a 24-year-old guy called Motaz Azaiza, who's just been named one of time's hundred most important people of the year. He's got 15 million followers, 15 million followers on Instagram and is producing really heartbreaking pictures. So that era of control, I think, is now gone. And it's one of the good uses of social media, to my mind, that the citizen journalist is able to say, "Look, this is happening." It's bearing witness, which is what journalism is.
Barber:
I think it also plays very interestingly into what we loosely call the narrative. Who is controlling the narrative? Who's got the high ground in the misinformation or information, war propaganda, war? And my judgement at the moment is that the Israelis have been on the defensive. They tried to open up a bit by offering access to journalists selectively in the Gaza Strip, visiting the hospital, looking at weapons. But overall, I think the images which have come out, often from citizen journalists, have been the slaughter of civilians, somewhat overshadowing, allowing people to forget what actually happened on October the seventh, the atrocities committed against Israelis in their homes.
Rusbridger:
And you now get into this. There's a piece in The Times today about how TikTok is now flooded with Palestinian information, whether it's information or disinformation, we won't know, I suspect, for a long time. And the question is whether this is just people sharing because there's no one preventing people sharing different kinds of images, or whether this is an algorithm that is amplifying. We're in a new era, and historians will be writing about this for decades to come, I suspect.
Barber:
More from Sir Don McCullin shortly on Media Confidential when he talks about some of the most dramatic images of his career and feeling poisoned by his success as a war photographer.
Rusbridger:
Now, COP28, the United Nations Committee of Parties Summit on Climate Change is just around the corner. This year, the global leaders will be assembling once again to discuss ways to cut emissions and attempt to halt or at least slow down rising global temperatures. The meeting in Dubai, if I had a way of doing ironic exclamation marks, I'd do that, and joining the conference will be Simon Sharpe. Now, Simon's a former UK diplomat and author of Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change. And a preview of this year's proceedings appears in this week's Prospect podcast and this month's Prospect Magazine.
Speaker 4:
Looking at the actual United Nations climate change negotiations, are they still serving a purpose? I think that's a more difficult question. I think they have achieved something over the last 30 years, which is some level of consensus. They've established some shared global goals, temperature goals, global net-zero, all that kind of thing. And they've provided some mutual encouragement between countries to set national targets and to come up with some actions to follow through. So we should give that credit where it's due, but we also have to recognise we're at a moment in time where far more than that is needed. We have to have structural change in the global economy five times faster this decade than we had on average over the last two decades. Let's not fool ourselves that we can achieve that by each country just acting on its own. We actually need real diplomacy.
Rusbridger:
This is Media Confidential with Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber. And on this episode, we're talking to the legendary photographer, Sir Don McCullin, now 88, who has a new book of key images from throughout his career.
Barber:
Don, in 1979, you made a vow not to go back into war zones, to branch out into other photography. You produced memorable photography in the northern towns in the mining towns. It was exhibited at Tate Britain. It's marvellous. There's great pictures of humanity there. But you went back into war zones. Why?
McCullin:
Well, can I cut this up twice this question? A great question, really, Lionel. First of all, I've been poisoned by war, poisoned by ambition, poisoned by dreaming of having my name under my work slightly elevating me in front of my emotional commitment.
And this is the other part of the answer to your question is that, frankly, there are what I call social wars that are equally as important as there was in foreign countries. Why should there be 2 million poor people living in this country, a country that once dominated a fifth of the globe with its imperial kind of colonialism, which was also terrible. I came from a very poor background. I understood poverty. And when I went to the north of England and I walked in through those satanic cities, I'd already seen those at the age of 15 when I worked on a steam train when I left school at the age of 15 with no education, quite a lot of ignorance.
And the poison that I keep talking about is in my blood, and it still won't go away. And I pay the penalty when I put my head on the pillow at night, because it all comes back with extreme clarity and prevents me from sleeping. So the only way I thought I could get around this, but be intermittent of wars was to do the landscape around where I live here in Somerset. And that landscape became my therapist, and I would stand for two hours on a hill in Somerset here and get no picture, but I thought that was like it was a medicine that cured me because my patience is never ending. If I go to an airport and they say the flight's been delayed for 12 hours, I'd sit there without any anger. I would say, "Okay."
But if I'm not answering this question properly, all I can say to you is that inside me there is something that I can't release. I would long to go to the Ukraine, but I would never survive, because I can't hardly walk properly, let alone run. And you can never outrun a bullet anyway. And I would like to go to Gaza, but I know there will be restrictions, you'd never get near the real story. So we're back where we started in our conversation here. I am damaged. And I'm aware of it, but I'm also aware that I've been walking on the ice for the last 60 odd years.
Rusbridger:
It's mundane to ask a technical question after that, Don. But all your pictures in this book are black and white, and you mentioned the iPhone generation now. What do you think technically of the images that are now produced from war zones? I'm thinking particularly of the astonishing images we're seeing coming out of Gaza, most of which I think have been taken on iPhones.
McCullin:
Frankly speaking, another interesting question, because I'm not a very technical person. And there's also been a danger with me that I've turned a lot of the photographs I've taken into icons, which one would assume that you would only see in museums and galleries and things like that. So there is a danger of over-responding. The way I look through my eyes and interpret through my eyes is I want to captivate the eyes of the person who is suffering and directly in front of me. And the eyes tell the story, in my opinion. They tell you the story of that person's suffering and the injustice of that person standing in that moment.
Also, I've always used an exposure metre, and I always print my own pictures. I always say that I don't want to take a picture without the exposure metre, and I don't want to be killed for a picture that's not possible to me because it's underexposed.
So the technical side of photography, I've always tried to shove aside or put behind me, because I'm not one of those gifted people who knows how to read instructions and things on equipment and things. I operate purely as a human man with a pair of good eyes that were bequeathed at me by my maker. So I relied very heavily upon the opportunity. It's always the opportunity. If it's there, I'm going to eat it all up and swallow it and get every ounce of juice from that moment. But there's a danger that one becomes greedy and selfish and you think these images belong to you. They do not. You are stealing these images from people suffering in front of you. So I feel as if I'm walking on burning coals that are burning my feet and telling me that what I'm doing isn't always right. I have a conscience, and I knew what I did in the wars were not always right.
Rusbridger:
Don, thank you so much for sparing the time to talk to us. The book is a beautiful book. It's called Life, Death and Everything in Between. It's published by GOST Books, and it's a fitting tribute to a remarkable life and career.
McCullen:
Well, I personally didn't come up with a title, which I thought was the most wonderful title. Fantastic. And it was very nice to talk to you, and I hope in a way you would understand, the strange way, come back to you with your questions and my thinking. It may not seem quite appropriate to others, but that's the life I've had in the last 65 years.
Barber:
Don, it's been a great privilege to talk to you again. All I can say is that you are a stern judge, but in your work, there's sometimes a terrible beauty, not my phrase, the WB Yeat's, but also always, Don, a humanity.
McCullin:
That's very kind of you to say that. And I've always thought that was the problem with my pictures, even the most tragic images. And when I mentioned the iconic kind of side of things, there is a beauty in war that people would never understand. One day in Vietnam, in the particular battle in the 1968 battle, I saw a black soldier crying because a medic who I'd photographed many times during that battle, helping others to survive, was killed by a sniper. And there was nothing more extraordinary to see the tears streaming down his face. And I thought people would never believe me, and they would think I was self-indulgent to say, "You will see moments of great beauty in war. You will see them." And I had the best eyes in the world, and I knew I saw them. And it does happen in war. Occasionally, you'll see gifts from another human being. War is 199% bad and evil and woefully wrong, but occasionally, you will get that moment of light that comes and shows you something, allows you to walk away and think there's no hope but there might be.
Rusbridger:
Don, I was thinking of, I think it's Coleridge's phrase, emotion recollected in tranquility when listening to this great man now living his life out in Somerset, and when he can, going out into the fields to capture pictures of peace and nature, but at the same time recollecting these emotions that just won't go away. And I found that profoundly moving. I know he has all kinds of regrets about his career, but actually, I think he does himself a disservice. There's no question that the photographs that came out of Vietnam, for instance, they may not have stopped war for all time, but my feeling is that they certainly shortened the duration of the Vietnam War. What do you think?
Barber:
Well, indeed, and these were not just pictures of suffering civilian casualties or soldiers who'd been shot wounded. There is, I think I used the phrase, you've gone for Coleridge, I've gone for Yeats, the terrible beauty of war. And he describes that it's very poignant, the image of the shoulder who's been shot by friendly fire. And he captures him almost in like Jesus on the crucifix, and he makes that comparison. I think he really... He has suffered himself through his work. But he's wrong when he says, "Nothing good has come of my work." That's too harsh a self-criticism. I think he's really brutally honest about motivation, his own feelings, the sense of some guilt in what he's doing. But overall, I think he can be immensely proud of what he accomplished as a photographer and professional journalist.
Rusbridger:
So, before we finish today, Lionel, I don't know what you've been watching or doing, I've been watching this BBC series, Boat Story, and episode one talking of violence, which we have been today, is it has got Tarantino levels of bloodshed. By the time you get to episode two and three, you realise, "This is all pastiche." So you just have to get through the rivers of blood in the first episode. And after that, I think, it's very taking and clever pastiche of what Tarantino would do if he was to come to Yorkshire and make a film about life in Yorkshire.
Barber:
Well, I think I can't really outdo you on the violence front, but my TV Programme that I'm addicted to with my wife, Victoria, involves the city where you and I met back in 1986, Washington. And this is a story... I'm now on, by the way, series two, episode 15 or whatever. It's a story of a man who is the designated survivor. That's the person who doesn't go to the Congress when the president gives a speech. You have one member of Congress, one member of the administration who's put in a secure location in case something happens. Well, the fact is domestic terrorists blow up the capital. Kiefer Sutherland suddenly finds himself president. And there we go. And Designated Survivor is on Netflix.
Rusbridger:
If you have any questions for us about the media, do email them to us at mediaconfidential@prospectmagazine.co.uk, and we'll answer a few of them in a future episode.
Barber:
Thank you for listening to Media Confidential, brought to you by Prospect Magazine and Fresh Air. The producer is Danny Garlick.
Rusbridger:
Remember to listen and follow us wherever you get your podcasts.
Barber:
And we're on Twitter / X too, @mediaconfpod.
Rusbridger:
Join us next time, and thanks again to the legendary Sir Don McCullin.
