Don McCullin

2 July 2020

Online Exhibition

To coincide with the reopening of Sir Don McCullin CBE’s exhibition ‘The Stillness of Life’ at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, the acclaimed photographer will present a special online exhibition of platinum prints. The digital curation echoes McCullin’s continued passion for international travel and the salvation he seeks within the British countryside. Spanning from the 1980s to the present day, the landscape imagery ranges from flooding meadows and expansive local views across Somerset, to the Sonepur Mela Festival along the Ganges in India, and the Northern Arctic in Svalbard Archipelago. For McCullin, the landscape is a living subject. His photography engages the energy of the land—its history, character and expression—recording an intimacy and awareness of the fragile relationship between us and our natural surroundings.Throughout his career McCullin has found himself on the edge of civilisation looking in, capturing scenes as they unfold with an irresistible intuition, evoking our innermost feelings and rawest state of what it is to feel alive. Undoubtedly conflict and disaster have never left him, having documented almost every major humanitarian disaster of the last half-century, but it is his landscape images that enable him to find solace and create shared moments of peace and stillness with his viewer. The online presentation will allow a focused insight into McCullin’s platinum printing, a photographic process that delivers an infinite tonal range unattainable in his more conventional gelatin silver prints. Unlike the silver print process, platinum lies on the paper surface and has an ability to draw out and emphasise subtle detail in multiple layers, ideally suited to McCullin’s meditative landscapes that resonate with human emotion. Whilst McCullin is known for developing his own work, in order to create these images he has collaborated with specialist printers of platinum and platinum-palladium prints, 31 Studio based in Stroud, the first of its kind to be set up in the United Kingdom. McCullin says that his platinums are an attempt to bring some balance to his work, and maybe to his memories. ‘This work is therapeutic,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t be happier than when I am standing out on a cold winter morning waiting for the right light. The platinums are the essence. They are as far as you can go with what I am trying to do and say.’ Both the online and physical exhibitions follow McCullin’s major retrospective at Tate Britain, London in Spring 2019, featuring over 250 photographs that celebrate the scope and achievements of his entire career. The survey exhibition is due to travel to Tate Liverpool later this year. In May 2020, The International Center of Photography honoured McCullin with the Lifetime Infinity Award for his longstanding contribution to photography. Founded by Cornell Capa in 1974, The International Center of Photography is the world’s leading institution dedicated to photography and visual culture, based in New York. 'Don McCullin. The Stillness of Life' will be on view at Hauser & Wirth Somerset until 6 September 2020.

Selected images

Somerset Levels, Glastonbury

c. 1990

The Arctic North, Svalbard Archipelago

2019

About the Artist

Don McCullin

‘When human beings are suffering, they tend to look up, as if hoping for salvation. And that’s when I press the button.’—Don McCullin

Photographer Don McCullin has witnessed some of the most harrowing humanitarian disasters of the last half-century, having covered every major conflict in his adult lifetime. His assignments included the Vietnam and Biafra War, Northern Ireland, the Lebanese Civil War, Belgian Congo, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of Phnom Penh. In pursuit of his work, he was wounded in Cambodia, fell from a roof in Salvador, was imprisoned by the Idi Amin regime in Uganda, and contracted cerebral malaria in West Africa. But in the course of his long career, and through his dedication to documenting global wars and conflict, he has become celebrated both as a master of black and white photography, and as history’s greatest war photographer. His early professional career shone a harsh spotlight on the reality of post-war life, including the stark landscapes of the industrial north, the increasing unemployment and homelessness levels in the capital, and growing unrest across the country. For the last two decades, McCullin has turned to look at the land around him, namely the Somerset village in which he was evacuated during the Blitz. Often referring to the sweeping rural landscape as his greatest salvation, the photographer demonstrates the full mastery of his medium with stark black and white images resonating with human emotion whilst retaining the honesty and grit synonymous with his earlier works.

McCullin holds a Commander of the British Empire medal, and is only the second photographer to become a Knight of the Realm. Major exhibitions include: ‘Hearts of Darkness,’ Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK (1980); Barbican Center, London, UK (1998); La Maison de la Photographie, Paris, France (2002); ‘Shaped By War,’ Imperial War Museum, London, UK (2012); Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries, UK (2017), a part of the Tate’s highly celebrated Artist Rooms. A major retrospective took place at Tate Britain, London and Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK in 2019-2021.