Don McCullin

The Stillness of Life

25 January - 6 September 2020

Somerset

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In Somerset, ‘Don McCullin. The Stillness of Life’ is a focused presentation of over 60 landscape photographs, mapping Sir Don McCullin CBE’s intimate relationship with the local landscape of Somerset and continued passion for global travel since the 60s. Regarded as one of the most accomplished war photographers of recent times, McCullin has spent the last six decades travelling to remote locations and witnessing harrowing scenes of conflict and destruction. Often referring to the British countryside as his greatest salvation, McCullin demonstrates the full mastery of his medium with stark black and white images resonating with human emotion. This personal survey depicts scenes from across the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia, revealing McCullin’s innermost feelings through powerful compositions of wild heavens, haunting vistas and meditative still lifes.

Having been evacuated to the safety of Somerset during the Blitz, McCullin has had a lifelong connection with the open farmland and hill country of the South West, feeling at peace within the solitude of the expansive landscape. The largest body of work featured in the exhibition explores local areas within walking distance of the photographer’s home, including ‘The River Alham near my house, Somerset’ (2007), ‘The Dew Pond, Somerset’ (1988) and ‘Batcombe Vale’ (1992-93). McCullin is able to evoke dramatic painterly representations of his home county with quiet confidence, shifting between the flooded lowlands of the Somerset levels to woodland streams, nearby monuments and historic hill forts.

These images will be displayed alongside a series of gelatin still life compositions, composed by McCullin in his garden shed and developed in his dark room at home. McCullin often refers to these still lifes as providing a deeper form of escapism than his landscapes, drawing inspiration from the great Flemish and Dutch renaissance masters. It is the emotional durability and intuitive presence of McCullin throughout the entire journey of image making, from capturing to developing, that allows us a rare insight into the redemption he has found from the land and place he calls home.

The exhibition continues to explore McCullin’s documentation across the United Kingdom, featuring pensive rural scenes that include Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland; the River Cam, Cambridgeshire; Rannoch Moor and Glencoe, Scotland. These images are presented in contrast to poignant urban landscapes from McCullin’s early career and visits to Northern England between the 1960s – 70s. McCullin’s honest and empathetic approach towards years of widespread British poverty, social concerns and hardship is most apparent in this body of work, highlighting a genuine commitment to communities often overlooked and the landscape in which they inhabit.

The photography included from the recent ‘Southern Frontiers’ project provides an important connection between the two key strands of McCullin’s work: conflict and landscape, perhaps the most extensive single body of work outside of the Somerset landscapes. Beginning in the early 2000s, he began documenting physical remains of the colossal Roman Empire in North African and Levantine landscapes, including the ancient site of Palmyra. McCullin travelled through Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, returning to Syria recently to document the decimation of these ancient sites by the so-called Islamic State. This driving force to connect and reflect on sacred locations and diverse communities continues further afield across to India and Indonesia, locations where McCullin has documented local rituals, festivals and architecture, enabling western viewers to meditate on the richness of world culture and daily praxis.

The exhibition concludes with four unseen Arctic landscapes captured by McCullin in 2019 during a trip to Svalbard. The journey was the culmination of a lifelong ambition to immerse himself in this ever-changing hostile environment. McCullin welcomed the challenge and experience of total isolation in the frozen lunar arctic landscape, seeking to convey the mysterious and mystical quality of the light in this part of the world. As with most of McCullin’s landscape images, this evocative series presents us simultaneously with overwhelming beauty and reminds us of the fragility of our natural environment.

Undoubtably war and disaster have never left McCullin, however it is through his ceremonial journeys across familial corners of the landscape that he sentences himself to peace and seeks to find stillness in life. In McCullin’s words, ‘My solace lies in recording what remains of the beautiful landscape of Somerset and its metallic dark skies, which give this county an aged and sometimes remote feeling as if the past is struggling against the future. The stillness of silence and sometimes my loneliness provoke my imagination, but, like the surrounding land, I am fighting to release the past in me.’

‘Don McCullin. The Stillness of Life’ follows McCullin’s major retrospective at Tate Britain in Spring 2019, featuring over 250 photographs that celebrate the scope and achievements of his entire career. This comprehensive survey will travel to Tate Liverpool in June 2020.

Selected images

The River Alham that runs through my village in Somerset

c. 1998

The extreme Arctic, Norway

2019

Liverpool, Slum clearance

Young schoolboys playing the slag heaps of the steel works, Consett

1982

Meroë, the east bank of the Nile, Sudan

2012

Looking forward to the valley of the tombs which Isis have destroyed

Batcombe Vale

1992

Installation views

About the Artist

Don McCullin

Renowned for an extensive oeuvre spanning a remarkable seven-decade career, Sir Don McCullin stands among the most celebrated and important photographers of the late 20th century. A combination of raw, emotional imagery and refined artistic sensibility underlines McCullin’s reputation as a master of his medium, capable of capturing both the harsh realities of the world and its profound beauty. Throughout, McCullin has provided an unflinching view of humanitarian crises and conflicts worldwide, while later endeavours simultaneously showcase his creative expertise through carefully composed still lifes, landscapes, and archaeological studies that carry with them the same honesty and grit of his earlier photographs. This year, McCullin celebrates his 90th birthday and becomes the recipient of the University of Oxford’s prestigious Bodley Medal: Life and Work award (2025), for his outstanding contribution to photography and journalism.

Don McCullin was born in 1935 in Finsbury Park, London. In 1959, following his return from National Service with the RAF, and postings in Egypt, Kenya, and Cyprus, he earned his first commission with The Observer, for his much-acclaimed photograph of a local gang named The Gov’ners. From this point began his early professional career, which shone a spotlight on the sobering reality of post-war life in Britain, including the stark landscapes of the industrial North, the increasing unemployment and homelessness levels in the capital, and growing unrest across the country.

In 1964, he returned to Cyprus, where he encountered his first taste of war, covering the violent intercommunal clashes of the Greek and Turkish Cypriots, for which he gained international recognition, receiving a World Press Award for his efforts. For two decades following, war would become the mainstay of his journalistic ventures, initially for The Observer, before taking post with The Sunday Times Magazine from 1966 to 1984, under Editor-in-Chief Harold Evans and Art Editor David King. His assignments included the Vietnam and Biafra Wars, ‘The Troubles’ of Northern Ireland, the Lebanese Civil War, the Belgian Congo, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the fall of Phnom Penh. In pursuit of his work, he was wounded in Cambodia, fell from a roof in El Salvador, was imprisoned by the Idi Amin regime in Uganda, and contracted cerebral malaria in West Africa. It was during this time he released his most celebrated images, gaining recognition both as a master of black and white photography, and as history’s greatest war photographer.

For the last three decades, Don McCullin has sought to relinquish the burden of what he has witnessed throughout his career, turning to the land around him. In later years, he has returned to the Somerset area where he had been evacuated to as a child during the Blitz, and where he now resides. He often refers to the sweeping rural landscape as his greatest salvation, which he captures in dramatic, painterly representations. At home, McCullin has developed a series of meticulously constructed still lifes that provide a deeper form of escapism, drawing inspiration from the great Flemish and Dutch Renaissance masters.

Since the early 1980s, McCullin has focused his foreign endeavours on more peaceful matters, travelling extensively through Indonesia, India, and Africa, documenting his encounters with places and people lesser known to the Western world. Twenty-five years ago, he embarked on a journey to create a cultural and architectural survey of the remains of the Roman Empire, fascinated by expansive landscapes and ruined cities, to intimate close-ups of delicate stone sculptures. Through photography, McCullin pays tribute to the iconic beauty of their marble perfection, and the turbulence and turmoil they have encountered throughout their very existence.

Don McCullin is the recipient of the University of Oxford’s Bodley Medal: Life and Work award (2025), for his outstanding contribution to photography and journalism. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Medal at the London Design Festival (2022). In 2020, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Center of Photography in New York. He was knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours, for his lifetime services to photography. He was named Master of Photography at the 2016 Photo London Fair. In 2006, he received the Cornell Capa Award for Lifetime Achievement at the International Center of Photography in New York. In 2003, he received the Royal Photographic Society’s Special 150th Anniversary Medal and Honorary Fellowship (HonFRPS). In 1993, he was the first photojournalist to be honoured with a CBE, for his sustained and significant contribution to photojournalism.

McCullin has been the subject of a number of major retrospectives in institutions worldwide, including Tate Liverpool, UK (2021); Tate Britain, UK (2019); National Gallery, Canada (2013); C/O Berlin Museum, Germany (2009); Rome International Festival, Mercati di Traiano, Italy (2004); Foam, Amsterdam (2002); Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France (2001); Centre National de la Photographie, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (1993); Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France (1992); and the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK (1980). Other important solo presentations include ‘Don McCullin in Rome’, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, Italy (2023); ‘Don McCullin. Stillness of Life’, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, UK (2020); ‘Don McCullin: Southern Frontiers’, Château La Coste, France (2019); ‘Shaped by War’, Imperial War Museum, UK (2011); 'Cold Heaven. Don McCullin on AIDS in Africa', Whitechapel Gallery, UK (2001), United Nations Headquarters, New York, NY (2001); 'Don McCullin: Sleeping With Ghosts', Barbican, UK (1997); and ‘Hearts of Darkness: Photography by Don McCullin’, ICP International Centre of Photography, New York (1981).

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