war photographer

Shaped by War: Photographs on McCullin's most celebrated image is his portrayal of a dazed American dogface, entitled Stressed US Marine, Hue, Vietnam. It was taken during the battle for the megacity of Hue in 1968 and, in its stillness and quiet intensity, says as important about the goods of war photographer on the individual psyche as numerous of McCullin's more graphic delineations of conflict and holocaust. The eyes that gawk out beneath the grimy helmet aren't gaping at the camera lens, but beyond it, into nowhere. Unexpectedly, when I ask McCullin about the snap, which features in this retrospective of his reportage in Manchester, he snoots." It kind of gets on my jitters now," he says," because it has appeared far and wide. It's like the Eddie Adams shot of the prosecution of a Vietnamese internee." Now 64, and married for the third time, McCullin lives and works in pastoral Somerset. These days, he concentrates on war photographer and has just completed what he says will be his last book, the grand Southern Frontiers A Journey Across the Roman Empire." It brings me a kind of peace," he says," until I hear the original nimrods shooting. Gunfire is a prelude to war for me. I feel I am back there on some godforsaken road passing dying dogfaces lying in acequias ." There's a sense when talking to McCullin that he carries a great burden of loss and remorse. He has, he says, seen too important in his continuance and it has left its mark on him. He's recognised as our topmost living war shooter, though he bridles at the term." Whatever I do, I've this name as a war shooter," he says, resentfully." I reject the term. It's reductive. I can not be written off just as a war shooter." This extraordinary exhibition will do nothing to help his cause. Alongside his photos of conflicts in Cyprus, the Belgian Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lebanon and beyond, numerous of which haven't been seen before, it features contact wastes and magazine spreads from his halcyon day