Don McCullin Quotes

I have been manipulated, and I have in turn manipulated others, by recording their response to suffering and misery. So there is guilt in every direction: guilt because I don't practice religion, guilt because I was able to walk away, while this man was dying of starvation or being murdered by another man with a gun. And I am tired of guilt, tired of saying to myself: “I didn't kill that man on that photograph, I didn't starve that child. That's why I want to photograph landscapes and flowers. I am sentencing myself to peace.

I only use a camera like I use a toothbrush. It does the job.

Photography isn't about seeing, it's about feeling. If I don't have some kind of feeling for what I'm shooting, how can I expect the person who looks at it to feel anything?

Photography is the truth if it’s being handled by a truthful person.

Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see is what my life is all about.

Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.

The real truth of life is on the streets. Photograph the daily lives of people, and how they exist, and how they fight for space and time and pleasure.

Photography's a case of keeping all the pores of the skin open, as well as the eyes. A lot of photographers today think that by putting on the uniform, the fishing vest, and all the Nikons, that that makes them a photographer. But it doesn't. It's not just seeing. It's feeling.

You cannot walk on the water of hunger, misery, and death. You have to wade through to record them.

I met an Englishwoman in Africa. She said she became a doctor because she saw one of my pictures. That’s all I want – just one doctor in Africa.

Sometimes it felt like I was carrying pieces of human flesh back home with me, not negatives. It's as if you are carrying the suffering of the people you have photographed.

I am a professed atheist, until I find myself in serious circumstances. Then I quickly fall on my knees, in my mind if not literally, and I say : 'Please God, save me from this.'

There's always a threat surrounding the things you love

I want to be the toughest photographer in the world.

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 has been very, very generous to me, but at the same time has damaged me.

I don't want to die for a few pictures. I want to live for every sunrise I can clap my eyes on; I want to see my family get older; I want to see the world try and get a bit more peaceful and understanding, which unfortunately I don't think I'll ever see.

I feel shabby - because I've made a name, quite a good name, out of photography. And I still find myself asking the same questions: Who am I? What am I supposed to be? What have I done?

Beauty is a dangerous word. Beauty becomes slightly indulgent for me. It's a snatched kind of moment for me because I'm entitled to a nice day in my life but beauty creeps close to narcissism, which I really dislike, particularly in human beings who were born with good looks, who cash in on it. It's a bit of a dodgy word for me. I look at it with caution. It can be a bit like walking into quicksand; it can get you in to all kinds of trouble.

I think, the more of a student I am, the better it will be for my work because it means once you have too many accolades you don't try harder. I would never allow myself to think that I don't have to try harder. I like the idea of always learning, always trying to do better. The word "master" sits uneasy on my terms.

I'm lucky - I don't feel any pressure.