Don McCullin

Considering Vietnam

Last Friday I went to the Imperial War Museum to attend a conference called 'Considering Vietnam.' Due to my Dissertation revolving around the media and the conflict in Vietnam I thought this was an excellent opportunity to take up.  This blog post is a way for me to talk about the first speaker of the conference, a man named Don McCullin.

Don McCullin
The first speaker was Don McCullin, a man who documented the Vietnam War through his photography and is more broadly recognised as one of Britain's most influential photographers. During the Vietnam War journalists, photographers and news crews had the ability to access all areas and photograph, film and publish a lot more material than they can now. Don McCullin was no exception, accessing dangerous war areas in Vietnam and even putting his life at danger, armed only with a camera. During the conference Don McCullin told us that he competed to take the best possible photographs, photographs that would represent himself, his career and humanity. He openly trespassed on uninvited territory, not to offer salvation but to take photographs. Whilst on tour in Vietnam, Don McCullin was in dangerous territory and even came so close to a bullet whilst crawling through a field that the bullet struck his camera.

Don McCullin has created some of the most memorable images of a number of different conflicts. The First image that I've chosen is of a shell shocked soldier, taken during the battle of Hue in 1968. It is so well known that in an interview with a journalist Don McCullin stated "It kind of gets on my nerves now. . . because it has appeared everywhere." An exhibition at the Imperial War Museum entitled "Shaped by War" is dedicated to Don McCullin's photography, even displaying the camera that took a bullet during the Vietnam War.







Photo Credit:
http://www.victoriagal.org.uk/exhibitions/future_exhibitions/don_mccullin_shaped_by_war.aspx
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/photographerframe.php?photographerid=ph041
https://people.creighton.edu/~spf54506/bookrpt.html
http://dulwichonview.org.uk/2011/12/20/don-mccullin-%E2%80%9Cshaped-by-war%E2%80%9D/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/10/don-mccullin-review