Don McCullin, Photographer HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Stephen Sackur.

Just occasionally, a photograph has the power to dig deep into our

collective unconscious. The photograph of the dead boy, dead on

a beach, galvanised a response to the migration crisis. My guest today

is world renowned photographer Don McCullin. He has taken unforgettable

images that have defined conflicts from the Apra to a writ. Does he

believe photographs can change the world? -- by our front and Beirut.

-- Biafra. Don McCullin, welcome to heart

talk. Thank you. Today we live in an era where people later pictures

every single day onto the Internet and wonder whether you feel the

power of the photograph has been by looted? Not until this week when we

saw a photograph of a soldier holding a dead child. I do not think

that single image has moved like nothing in decades. I think that

photograph really shifted peoples slightly hard and attitude on

immigration. Some pushed aside the immigration story and brought the

human touch to the situation. Thinking not just about that picture

but of some of your pictures that we will talk about in the course of

this interview, stuck in people 's minds the years and decades... Do

you think those photographs are obvious at the time to the

photographer or only afterwards, when you see what you have captured

in an instant that you then begin to think this might have amazing

impact? Absolutely not. The kind of photographer I am, I can see right

away before I press that button. Can you? Absolutely. It is not about

being a professional and knowing. I look a situation building and I know

exactly the moment, when I press that button, I know right away. In

the old days you had to sometimes await a couple of weeks when you got

home to England if you were on a foreign assignment and you hold your

breath when you hold that negative and 90% of the time I have been

right about that decision. Having said all that and having discussed

previously about the dead child picture, I think this pictures come

and go. Do not Inc these pictures after a while do not make much

difference in the world we live in. -- do not think. News stories are

transmitted so quickly and turnover so quickly and there is always

another tragedy and people tend to forget and start concentrating on

daily problems. I want to come back to the sort of long-term impact of

photography and look at some of your most famous news photographs but

before that, I want to take a step back for people who do not know you

and I want you to tell me about your up reading -- up bringing and being

raised in serious poverty in London after the war and whether that gave

you an inclination to go into the darker corners of light to give a

voice to the underprivileged? Was there a connection that? Yes, when I

was a child, I grew up in a miserable place in north London. We

had a couple of rooms beneath the ground level and I had an invalid

father who died at the age of 40 and my mother became the father. There

were three other apartments, as you might call them, and then the war

was on so I knew what it was like to be bombed and it was quite

terrifying. I was evacuated as I became a temporary refugee myself

going to Somerset and then to the north of England which was very

harsh. In a way, might ground... And I do not like to harp on it too

much... My background was quite a good way to me to go into a harsher

world of tragedies that I eventually entered into and when I looked at

things, I could smell poverty, I could feel the pain, I was never

hungry as a child, I must say, but I really was the right person for that

kind of journey into that kind of dark this, tragedy, violence and

suffering. When he started going around the world photographing

conflict, your first each to become famous was taking close to your

home. You call it the governor 's. What I love about this, it is quite

a staged photograph that it catches something about the group of young

men, one has to say young men living close to the edge of the law, living

in a very poor postwar district of London. Would this be what today we

call a gang? I suppose you could say that. First of all let me say that

this photograph has a slightly theatrical look about it that it is

staged, of course, they said, take a picture of us and go and get your

camera. I was in Africa covering a war in 1955 and I had never used a

camera. It was a brand-new camera. Ran up the house, this was in the

street I lived. The irony is the way these people are dressed - they look

like bankers... They look very smart they were from a very poor

neighbourhood and seen as, frankly, a criminal element. They were not so

much criminal element that a criminal element came to challenge

them and in doing so, policemen came to intervene and the other crowd

that came, one of them stabbed the policemen and he died literally

yards from that photograph was taken. What I take from that, you

knew violence and new how to look after yourself. Soon after taking

that picture, because it became well-known as a sign of The, young

people in gangs, in London... I think the Observer newspaper to

queue up and you were sent to cover conflict in north London but Cyprus

and then was all over the world. Was it, in a way, our match adrenaline

fuelled -- a Biaframacho infused effect? I put up the front to make

people believe I was the man who was not afraid. Early on you made a name

for yourself. You went off to Cyprus to cover the war and by the early

70s you were doing other conflicts, including Biafra which led to a

terrible famine. That is when, it seems to me, a real dark edge and it

your photography. This is a very well-known picture, I should say,

this is distressing but we felt we should show it because they were so

many children and young people suffering in that world. Before I

got to Biafra, I had been to Vietnam which was a bigger canvas. Believe

it or not, this woman is 24 years of age, I mean, she could be 64. There

is something furious about this photograph, in the far distance

where the other person is sitting, I can spot some writing. I thought,

when I have taken I will read what is scribbled on this world and it

said today are you a reborn. It was such a moving statement and when I

saw this woman... It was about civilian suffering at this stage,

normally wars are about soldiers and it is amazing how the shift as big

focused entirely on the civilians than what the soldiers get up to.

You are part of that shift. I suppose if your empathy showed the

real story was with the bystanders, with the civilians and,

particularly, the children. I am guessing that the more you focused

on them, the more difficult it became so you personally to to put

up with what you are experiencing. I had a family of my own. At first war

is exciting. Then you start wondering, why am I here? Am I

having an adrenaline rush and going in the wrong direction? You use the

word sometime ago, is said there were times when you felt like a

mercenary? Yes. The 24-year-old woman clearly on the edge of

starvation trying to feed her baby... In a terrible, cynical sense

she is a prop, in a way, for the work you are doing. There is a

danger because I composed it in a way which is stylish but

compassionate. There is a danger that it becomes an icon, it becomes

our. Do you feel uncomfortable when people like me, years later, invite

you and we discuss it in terms which, in a sense, are not about her

any more, her individuality and her story has been lost? I feel

uncomfortable because I am aware of what you are saying and I know it is

coming and I do feel uncomfortable because I have made a name for

myself in photography and I do not wear the laurels comfortably. I know

I am open to all kind of criticism and attack at eye and basically...

Originally I was only the messenger. I bring these images back, I want

you to feel some responsibility for this person's situation. You did not

create it, neither did I but at the end of the day I do have a hell of a

lot of integrity in me. Let's talk about lines and crossing lines, you

talked about the desire to intervene and do something. I think there is

one particular case where you actually intervened in Cyprus. There

was an old lady caught in crossfire and you thought she was bound to die

and at some point you cross a line and you just abandon the Observer

and got involved? If I can indulge myself, it is a similar kind of

attitude may be of somebody who won a Victoria Cross who said I am not

going to stand this any more and do something. I was watching this lady

coming down the road being helped by a British soldier who was playing a

Nato role at the time and there was a massive battle and you could see

the old lady was not going to make it and, I thought, I am not just

going to sit here and watch this. I was taken over by human decency and

are just put my cameras down and I belted in and got her and took her a

way. She did not weigh very much. It was like carrying a rate the old.

All of a sudden, I lost it and had to do something to stop it if you

lost it then, how would you be sure on future assignments that you would

not keep on losing it? That you would fail to do your job is one of

the most famous fatal journalist of your generation -- photojournalists

of your generation because you'll humanity was coming through too

much? I think I could change the word humanity partially from the

fact that I had a guild. I knew I was stealing these images. These

people did not say it note to me what I knew what I was doing. -- did

not say no to me. I know how far I could push things but I was never

really without compassion or integrity so standing in front of

the starving Biafra woman made me feel really terrible knowing that

these pictures wind up in a magazine in front of people, you know, who

could help change things. Let's talk about another, perhaps

the most famous photograph of yours. This is a photograph not of a

suffering civilian, but the soldier. It is a US soldier in

Vietnam. Many people will know this picture rather well. What is it, do

you think, you are the author of it, what is it about this picture that

made it so... Such a connection for so many people? Well, I think we

expect soldiers to be... You know, to handle themselves. We expect them

to get through it. And if they don't they have backup, like the medical

teams, and they can be evacuated. This man is suffering from shell

shock. He looks literally wide-eyed with fear. Yes, but the men around

him didn't respect his position. They thought he was shirking the

issue. And you know, we all look like that after two weeks at this

battle. It was during the Tet offensive in 1968. We all look that

after two weeks of sleeping and foxholes and next the debtor bodies.

-- next two dead bodies. New age like this man has aged. What strikes

me as so important about the still photographs that you produce, and

not just yourself, other photographers as well, is that they

live in our memories so much longer than so much of the video we see of

the important news events of the last few decades. What is it, do you

think, about a still picture that can penetrate, oftentimes, deeper

into us than moving images? I think it is because it is much more

haunting in a way. The still picture, in a way it is quiet. It is

haunting, what it can be loud. It can slightly torment you, because

you feel guilt that you're not in that position. You can carry away

this, or try and run away from this image. I have always thought,

maybe, what I did was to make you see the eyes, in the case of the

people I photographed, in the case of the starving mother and this

man. See the eyes. The eyes are all telling, and the eyes are all

accusing. Can I now centred on the yourself? You know, we have talked

about the mental state of some of your subjects. What about your own

mental state? How close to complete this bad did your job take you? --

complete the spat? Walking into a Biafra hospital and seeing 800 dying

children, when these children saw you coming, they thought there is a

white guy, he is bringing aid -- despair. And all I did was to walk

in with (CHEERING) cameras around my neck. And I saw some of those

children actually dropping and dying -- two Nikon cameras. So it was

never an easy journey back to England knowing I was going to a

family of my own, well fed, and occasionally throwing food away at

lunchtimes and mealtimes. So I played a very tricky game with my

life, trying to kind of cleanse my heart aches and my sorrows. These

images are never... It is not the photographs I took which I share

with other people. It is the memories that I'd managed to harbour

in my own mind. So to answer your question, they took its toll on me a

bit. Do you want question, they took its toll on me a

bit. Do you -- are you haunted still by some of the things you have seen?

I am actually, like men being executed in front of me in Beirut,

in the Congo, where the cruelty is incredibly bad, in the Belgian

Congo. Even today, these things, they will never go away from me. But

I have always said to the magazine bosses, no, I won't get on the

plane, and take the air ticket and go there. It was my own choosing to

go that -- I could always have said. Some of your friends and colleagues

in the same business as yourself, other photojournalists and writers,

they don't come back. They balance the risks, and from time to time

they get it wrong. I'm thinking of people like Matt Tom Lynch or Marie

Colvin. That must take its toll on you when you worked alongside them

and they didn't come back -- Matt Tomlin. Well, I feel very grateful

that I have managed to survive. I am very grateful that I managed to

survive. Since 1981 there have been more than 1000 people in the media

profession who have lost their lives. The numbers are going higher

and I put it bluntly to you. Do you think frankly that particularly

photographers who have to get closest to the action on the

frontline, do you think that they these days are taking insane levels

of risk as Mac considering they are not all set by proprietors of

newspapers, they are now beginning to get very kind of queasy about

sending people into places that are so dangerous, like Iraq and Syria.

They don't want to take the risk, and some of these guys pay their own

airfare and go there and die. So it is quite shocking, in a way, that

the list that we are talking about, the 1000, will grow and grow and

grow. Well, when you say that to me, Don McCullin, I just wonder why

you, even though you are not obviously full time devoted to

photojournalism, why you still from time to time insist on going back.

You are in your 80th year, and it seems you have a plan to go to Iraq.

He enter Syria three years ago and then you said it makes me feel

sick, these days. And actually ashamed. And he said, I'm not ever

going to do it again. And yet here you are, I believe, planning a trip

to Iraq. Do you know, I felt slightly redundant just sitting at

home watching BBC News or any news bulletins, reading in the

newspapers. I read all the papers I can get my hands on. I feel slightly

redundant just reading second-hand reports. I want to go there and see

it for myself. But even though you said after Syria I now realise this

doesn't make a difference, we can't change things. I am photographing

things today that I was photographing 40 years ago and

humanity doesn't learn, and things don't change, and I'm sick of it.

That's what you said. I suppose I'm suffering from hypocrisy, really. At

least I am earning up to it. But I photographed the English landscape

where I live but I am running out of options. I am getting older, and I

think while I can do something, you know, for the last time, as if it

was the last time, sometimes publish a book and say it was the last

book, but if it was the last that's that means I am finished and washed

up. And what do I do then? Just sit in my house and look at the sunset?

No. It is interesting, I want to look at one last picture from you.

This is a work close to your house, a beautiful land and site makes

skyscape from Somerset and you have said, somewhat controversially to my

mind, that in terms of legacy you would like people to remember it you

as much for the sort of photographed as for the photographs of suffering

and conflict. That's quite true, and the reason is that the English

landscape is under such threat. Every time I looked over the hills

where I live now there is another new house gone up. And I am fearful

of the wind turbines, and I want the countryside to look kind of

Christine, like this. This is a beautiful hill, I am standing on a

Bronze Age hillfort just on the edge of my village. I don't want England

to change, I want the landscape... It is a very important part of our

lives, the landscape. It allows us to breathe and gives us hope and if

we cover it in concrete and roads and cars, what will there be left

for us? I want to end with quite a simple thought, really. May the

importance of the path you did take on the conflicts that you have

pictured is that your photographs did change people's mines, and

maybe, in a small, small way, help change the course of history --

minds. Do you believe that? Not totally, no. I think that the minds

of the people are changed, possibly would have converted anyway. And

what I left behind as a token of... You know, of a much bigger picture

that I think is coming. Nothing can be bigger than this migration

tragedy that we are looking at. And when I saw the news of... You know,

women and children being gassed and hosed down with these water cannons,

I was so embarrassed to be a human being, I think... You know, if this

is the best we can do, when people have lost everything, to actually

kind of inflict physical misery on them on top of that, I think, have I

succeeded in any way? I very much doubt it, really. After all these

photographs, you've ended up with a pretty bleak view of humanity. I

have 5000 photographs in my house is stored in boxes and when I look at

them I feel really let down by the fact that what have I've been doing

for the last 50 -60 years, I have been taking these photographs and we

are still looking at massive tragedies in the world, and most of

all on the continent of Africa, North and South. We have the end

there, but Don McCullin, thank you very much for being on HARDtalk. It

is a pleasure, thank you. Tuesday was a pretty mixed bag

of weather, to say the very least.