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Shaped by War book cover
Shaped by War
2010
First Published
4.72
Average Rating
208
Number of Pages

The story of a legendary photographers' life and work is also a remarkable and devastating visual document of war and warfare No other photographer in modern times has recorded war and its aftermath as widely and unsparingly as Don McCullin. After a London childhood during the Blitz, McCullin feels his life has indeed been shaped by war. From the building of the Berlin Wall at the height of the Cold War to El Salvador and Kurdistan, McCullin has covered the major conflicts of the last 50 years, with the notable exception of the Falklands, for which he was denied access. This remarkable narrative of McCullin's life contains a collection of pictures of him in the field with key photographs from his career. Whenever possible emphasis has been placed on the presentation of previously unpublished material. The inclusion of rarely-seen color work challenges the conventional appraisal of McCullin's world being exclusively black and white. Numerous documents, original publications, and personal mementoes are reproduced, including his cameras, boots, helmet, numerous passports, and illuminating personal correspondence. McCullin recounts the course of his professional life in a series of devastating texts on war, the events, and the power of photography. The brutality of conflict returns over and over again, and here McCullin voices his despair.

Avg Rating
4.72
Number of Ratings
50
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4 STARS
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3 STARS
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Author

Don McCullin
Don McCullin
Author · 11 books
Don McCullin grew up in north London and was evacuated in 1940 to Somerset. He failed the eleven-plus examination and went to Tollington Park Secondary Modern School. He won a trade art scholarship to the Hammersmith School of Arts and Crafts and Buildings. His father, who was an invalid, died, aged forty and McCullin was forced to find work to earn money for the family. He became a pantry boy on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway dining cars, travelling between London and Manchester. In 1950 he went to work in a cartoon animation studio in Mayfair before the Observer newspaper bought one of his gangland pictures and set him on the road as a photojournalist. He moved to the Sunday Times, where he worked for eighteen years. His photographs of almost every major conflict in his adult lifetime until the Falklands war provide some of the most potent images of the twentieth century. His pictures are in major museum collections all over the world. He is the holder of many honours and awards, including the C.B.E. His home is in a Somerset village.
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