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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Don McCullin

Sept 16, 2020 – May 9, 2021
Albert Dock, Liverpool L3 4BB, United Kingdom

At the age of 83, when most oldies are tucking into their second cup of pudding, Don McCullin was flying in a Black Hawk helicopter after photographing land-mine victims in Yemen. His camera is his conscience and his conscience has no retirement plan. The greatest photojournalist of his or anyone’s generation, McCullin has documented the horrors and traumas of war (Vietnam), mass starvation (Biafra), sectarian violence (Northern Ireland during the Troubles), and mad tyranny (Idi Amin’s Uganda). His images are dark-toned, scarred with action and distress, filled with rubble, the haunting record of a world intent on ripping itself apart. It’s taken its toll on McCullin too. “I’ve got more tattoos on me, psychologically, than David Beckham,” he recently said. But still he presses on, a lesson and a reprimand to us all. Included in the exhibition: images of life in Liverpool during the 1960s and 70s. —James Wolcott

Don McCullin, “The Bogside, Derry, Northern Ireland,” 1971. © The artist.