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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the author's empathy for underprivileged communities, driven by personal experience.
In this quote, Don McCullin expresses his commitment to documenting the experiences of the underprivileged, drawing from his own background. He emphasizes the importance of standing in solidarity with marginalized groups, such as Palestinians and the poor in India, highlighting a deep connection to their struggles through his photography. McCullin’s work serves not only as an artistic endeavor but also as a means of advocacy for those whose stories are often overlooked or ignored.
In practice
In a speech at an art gallery showcasing social justice photography, I might use this quote to emphasize the importance of representing marginalized voices.
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.
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 it’s being handled by a truthful person.
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.
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.
A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.
Most people wait for the muse to turn up. That's terribly unreliable. I have to sit down and pursue the muse by attempting to work.
Who among us has not dreamt, in moments of ambition, of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and rhyme, supple and staccato enough to adapt to the lyrical stirrings of the soul, the undulations of dreams, and sudden leaps of consciousness.
There is a force of exultation, a celebration of luck, when a writer finds himself a witness to the early morning of a culture that is defining itself, branch by branch, leaf by leaf, in that self-defining dawn, which is why, especially at the edge of the sea, it is good to make a ritual of the sunrise.
Poetry demands a different material than prose. It uses another facet of the same fact... the spontaneous conformation of language as it is heard.
We have our factory, which is called a stage. We make a product, we color it, we title it and we ship it out in cans.
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