Risques et Périls

Introduction by Robert Pledge.
Self-taught in both photography and interpreting the world, McCullin is a man with a limpid, innocent eye who remains incredulous when faced with the barbaric.

Through his images published in the Sunday Times Magazine for over twenty years, he tried to disturb his compatriots’ smug Sunday comfort by showing them the injustice that human beings wreak upon each other. Berlin cut in half by the wall, the Congo wounded, Vietnam bombed and tortured, Biafra famished, Bangladesh ravaged, Cambodia assassinated, El Salvador rebelling, Ireland tormented: his photographs bear witness to the cruelty of the world. As Robert Pledge points out, Don McCullin’s gaze ‘continues to be the moving reflection of the gaze of the subjects he identifies with.’