Introduction
For years, Don McCullin
the photographer and Don McCullin the man have fascinated me. He is often described as a war photographer
but he much prefers to be known simply as a photographer. Of course, he has been present at many
conflicts and has recorded some horrific images but he has also taken beautiful
photographs of nature – from the great stages of war to the green pastures of
peace, one might say.
When it comes to the
arts of painting and photography, I have been a skimmer, not as patient as I
should have been to stand, stare, study and absorb the work I looked at.
For this collection of
poems, I slowed down and spent long periods of time immersing myself in
Don McCullin’s work, not as an impatient civilian but as a would-be poet trying to
understand each photograph and in turn trying to think about the photographer
at work.
This collection is influenced by Don McCullin’s work and the work of
other war photographers. It is not intended to be a biographically accurate
reflection of any one individual’s life.
The McCullin Bridge
I see a bridge in my mind. Don McCullin is at one end observing pain and
tragedy. I am at the other end safe in peace and relative normality. He is
doing the dirty work and I wait for him to cross over to give me the news in photographs.
He does all the crossings back and forth while I stand by. For that reason the
bridge is called The McCullin Bridge.
We build more walls than
bridges, choosing obstacles over clear paths, blocking
as much of the road
ahead as we can because we can because we have freedom
to do and say whatever
we want to do and say, to goad, to rattle, to shake fists,
to covet, to steal, to
kill. A bridge has sides but does not take sides. It offers
neutral middle
ground, a place to stand to scan as far as the horizon’s border
for any clue that
justifies memorials, statues and fields of small white crosses,
any clue that explains
fallen heroes, fallen villains, fallen innocents, marked
and unmarked graves,
graves that may never be found. We have seekers
of the sensational out for a
fast buck and, mercifully, seekers of injustice and suffering.
At First
We are born into a
specific part of society, born a colour, born
a class, born to parents
who want us or don’t want us, who care
or couldn’t care less,
who can cope or are hopeless. At first, a stamp
appears on our baby-bald
heads and from a moment just after conception,
we are what we are and
for the formative years of our existence
there is not a damned
thing we can do about our helplessness.
We are there to be
shaped either as pure examples of the human spirit,
unblemished by ignorance
or bigotry, blessed by good health and fortune
or poisoned by the
seductive sweet elixir of cretinous malevolence.
Guilt
There is guilt at all
points of the compass, guilt that eases into childhood
and damages perfection,
our own template nibbled at the edges by life.
The toddler’s temptation
to raid the biscuit tin or the sweetie jar, natural
as the first woman
stealing the first apple. Enter swaggering sin, with attitude.
Witnesses
Most of us watch news
films or skim photos of poverty, pain, death and fear
with little regard for
the camera crews and photographers inches from faces,
from bodies, from bloody
remains, from the stink of desperation and torture.
Those who record moving
and still pictures from the great stages of war,
bring back their news
from hell, their concerned photography, photography
of conscience to inform
us, yes, but also to arouse our anger at the horror.
Witnesses, impassioned,
tenacious witnesses, finding dark strength to whirr
and click their way
through killing fields and hospital wards and rubbled streets,
printing images not
including the ones they will carry as grim memories forever.
Shot
From the great stages of
war to the green pastures of peace, journeys, return
journeys if lucky,
single journeys maybe, at the mercy of bullets, missiles,
shrapnel and luck.
“Just get the picture” is the brief, an unforgettable shot,
magazine cover of the
year, of a corpse with eyes open, eyes that always burn.
Badges
Open wounds,
deliberately prevented from healing, seeping like live jewellery,
glinting in the light,
unavoidable near-scars, moist, real, badges of the rugged
correspondents who have
gone to wars, been there, done that, got the flak jacket.
Images and incidents
drawn into a hungry lens and fed over the wires and wi-fi,
back to the production
office – “Oh, that’s awful”, “It must be hell over there”,
“Poor people”, “All
that blood” – and the choosing of the front page money shot.
Printed, televised,
that’s that. No rest, more hunger, on to the next assignment.
Open wounds prevented
from healing, not physical holes peppering bodies
but invisible
everlasting wounds filed and buried in heads, hearts and souls.
Frames
The photographer feels
the reasons to go to war zones but can’t explain them,
pictures people not
wordsmiths, a Rolleicord IV not a ballpoint pen, compelled
to frame message-moments
that at a glance present the ugly point, showing
the repugnance of dead
people, damaged people, terrified people, the mayhem.
Poseurs
People die in front of
you, behind you, beside you. Are they dying for you?
The ultimate poseurs
offering you their last breaths and the seconds after,
a chance for fame without
fortune, a golden photo-opportunity gifted to you
by lives taken,
sacrificed, the bloody meat of your job, the quest for graphic honesty
in the
still faces, contorted bodies, scattered belongings, soldiers, civilians, men,
women, children and dogs, your cast of motionless characters in this grim fairy tale.
For you are the storyteller - once upon a time - but there is nothing vague
about
the precise second of once, the moment branded inside your skull. You got
the photos.
You have time to edit. Lucky you. Still breathing.
Lies
We will remember them,
we will never forget, this must never happen again,
yeah, yeah, but then it
does because that’s who we are, what we’ve become,
perhaps what we’ve
always been, savages, plunderers, murderers disguised
as decent human beings
washing cars and cutting grass, inwardly insane.
Feelings
It is not about looking,
it is about feeling, finding the feeling in what you see
and carefully carrying
that feeling to anyone who bothers to look at the pictures.
If something is joyful,
show and celebrate the joy. If something is joyless, show
that you witnessed
joylessness. Take the viewer deeper and deeper into reality,
the truth of what is
there before the cropping, the tidying up, the airbrushing.
Show what must be
shown for the sake of honesty, the good, the bad, the ugly,
especially the things
we’d rather not see. We must see it all otherwise we live
an edited life, a life
of skimming books and galleries. Truth is the best picture,
the best propaganda, the
shock that wakes us up to the sight of what happens.
Job
I was only doing my job.
I was able to walk away from a man dying of hunger.
I was able to walk away
from a girl being beaten to death by a screaming mob.
I was able to walk away
from a skeletal child, naked and lost in an orphanage.
I was able to walk away
to consider my lifetime’s work. I was only doing my job.
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