DON MCCULLIN

Early Years

Born in 1935, Don McCullin grew up in a poor part of north London, evacuated several times during the Second World War. He studied at Hammersmith School of Arts and Crafts and Buildings and between 1954–1956 he was called up for National Service in the RAF, spending time in Egypt, Kenya and Cyprus. He returned to London with a twin-lens reflex Rolleicord camera and began photographing life around him. In 1961 he won a British Press Award for work surrounding the building of the Berlin Wall, and he received a World Press Photo Award for his coverage of the 1964 civil war in Cyprus.

Don McCullin: Artworks

Don McCullin is a compassionate photographer and totally self-taught, saying he studied the work of practitioners including Steiglitz and Steichen, “romantics, with their brilliant sense of composition and their depth”. He worked as a photojournalist for The Observer and then The Sunday Times, covering wars in Uganda (where he was imprisoned), Chad, Israel, Cambodia (where he was shot and badly wounded), Lebanon, Iran and Afghanistan. His work has also often focused on poor and underprivileged communities, including areas of London and Britain’s northern industrial cities.

McCullin shifted his focus and concentrated his work from the 1980s onwards on places where the Indigenous populations had had little contact with the Western World, including the 2010 book Southern Frontiers, examining the legacy of the Roman Empire in the Middle East and North Africa.

• His 1969 image Neptune (“because he looks like the sea god”) depicts a homeless Irish man who slept by a fire near Spitalfields Market, on the edge of the City of London, home to wealth and power in direct contrast to the photo subject’s precarious existence.
• McCullin spent six weeks in Northern Ireland in 1971, documenting the impact of violence on civilians—during this trip he became the unintentional victim of a CS gas attack aimed at Catholic youths by British soldiers.
• A good example of McCullin’s beautifully assembled still life photography is Still Life with Chalice and Horse Mushrooms in My Garden Shed (1989), a black-and-white image of large and small mushrooms accompanied by a dulled metal goblet filled with foliage.
• Having been evacuated to Somerset during the Second World War, McCullin formed a bond with that county and has shot painterly depictions of the countryside around his home, including 2019’s Looking towards Creech Hill, near Bruton, Somerset.

Don McCullin: Select Awards

• Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society, London (1978)
• Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) (1993)
• Royal Photographic Society Centenary medal (2007)
• Knighted in the New Year Honours for services to photography (2017)
• Lifetime Achievement award, the International Centre of Photography, New York City (2020)
• Lifetime Achievement medal, London Design Festival, London (2025)
• Companion of Honour, King’s Birthday Honours List (2026)

Don McCullin: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Expeditions

• Don McCullin. 90, Hauser & Wirth Somerset (2026)
• Don McCullin. A Desecrated Serenity, Hauser & Wirth, New York City (2025)
• Don McCullin a Roma, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma, Rome (2023)
• Don McCullin. The Stillness of Life, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset (2020)
• Don McCullin. Proximity, Hamiltons Gallery, London (2019)
• Don McCullin. Conflict – People – Landscape, Hauser & Wirth Somerset (2015)
• Don McCullin. A Retrospective, National Gallery Canada, Ottawa (2013)
• Shaped by War, Imperial War Museum North, Manchester (then on tour) (2010)
• Faith and Church. Portraits by Don McCullin, National Portrait Gallery, London (2007)
• Cold Heaven. Don McCullin on Aids in Africa, UN headquarters, New York City (then on tour) (2001)
• Don McCullin. Sleeping with Ghosts, Galleria Carla Sozzani (Milan, then on tour) (1994)
• Don McCullin, Le Chateau d’Eau, Toulouse (1992)
• Hearts of Darkness. Photography by Don McCullin, ICP International Centre of Photography, New York City (1981)
• Don McCullin. Retrospective, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (1980)
• Don McCullin. The Palestinians, ICA, London (1979)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Dark Tales: Britain and Ireland Through a Gothic Lens, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol (2026)
• The Great and the Good, Hamiltons Gallery, London (2022)
• The Land We Live In. The Land We Left Behind, Hauser & Wirth Somerset (2018)
• Blow-Up, Antonioni Filmklassiker und die Fotografie, CO Museum, Berlin (2015)
• Conflict, Time, Photography, Tate Modern, London (2014)
• Images of Armed Conflict And its Aftermath, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York City (2013)
• Autour de l’extreme, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris (2010)
• Contact/s:30, The Art of Photojournalism, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2007)
• Art and the 60s. This was Tomorrow, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (2004)
• Young Meteors—British Photojournalism 1957–1965, National Media Museum, Bradford (1998)

Further Reading

• Don McCullin’s website
• Don McCullin’s Instagram
• Profile at Hauser & Wirth

Don Mccullin FAQs

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