When I take a black-and-white portrait, it's not particularly meant to please you. It's meant to talk to you; it's meant to shame you. It's meant to scream out at you, and it has a message.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that black-and-white portraits convey deep messages rather than merely pleasing the viewer.
Don McCullin's quote highlights the power of black-and-white photography as a medium for expression. He suggests that such portraits are not created for aesthetic pleasure, but rather to provoke thought and elicit strong emotional responses. The intention behind the artwork is to communicate a powerful message that challenges or confronts the audience, pushing them to engage with the deeper implications of the image.
In practice
During an art exhibition, to explain the intention behind my work.
I've spent most of my life embracing violence in wars and revolutions. Even a famine is a form of violence. Because I photograph people in peril, people in pain, people being executed in front of me, I find it very difficult to get my head around the art narrative of photography.
I started out on photography accidentally. A policeman came to a stop at the end of my street, and a guy knifed him at the end of my street. That's how I became a photographer. I photographed the gangs that I went to school with.
In my photography, I always lean towards the underprivileged because that's where I came from. When I went to the wars, I attempted to go and stand by those who were being trodden on. By that, I mean people like the Palestinians. When I go to India, I see really the poorest people, and I tend to be drawn to them.
I am sometimes accused by my peers of printing my pictures too dark. All I can say is that it goes with the mood of melancholy that is induced by witnessing at close quarters such intractable situations of conflict and joylessness.
Photography is the truth if itβs being handled by a truthful person.
I'm from England, and like every other great empire who stole bits of the world, there is a price to pay. And I was born in 1935. So, since I've been conscious of the world, I've either been in, or been on the periphery of, a war zone.
I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength. [From a 1986 Fangoria interview]
Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries.
The first thing that an architect must do is to sense that every building you build is a world of its own, and that this world of its own serves an institution.
The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!
Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e... In other words, the utopian enterprise.
Fine music without devotion is but a splendid garment upon a corpse.
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