Tate Britain’s latest exhibition showcases some of the photographer’s impactful images from the last sixty years.
The Guardian: ***** “There is a visceral quality to McCullin’s photographs, in their analogue tonalities, the depth of their blacks and greys, the clarities and dimming of their whites, their strong and weak light, their focus, their attendance on the unconscionable.
Evening Standard: ***** “For a man who has been so often under shelling, sniper fire and artillery, and wounded in the process, there are surprisingly few pictures of action. Generally we see the aftermath: the effects, the victims, the distressed, the wounded, the dying and the dead. This sets up the tension, the twinge of conscience running through the show, of deriving such beauty from such tragedy and distress.”
Culture Whisper: ***** “As Donald Trump and the right-wing media continue to lambast journalists for conjuring stories that appeal to the liberal elite, the exhibition highlights the personal risks journalists take on a daily basis to record the truth. McCullin often put himself in danger for the sake of exposing humanity’s worst atrocities.”
Time Out: ***** “Don’t get me wrong: McCullin is a magical, intuitive photographer. Almost every picture here is beautifully composed, lit and shot. It’s just hard to look at them objectively.”
The Telegraph: ***** “You lose track, somewhere around halfway through this powerful retrospective, of the number of people you’ve been shown who have either just been shot – American marines dragged from Vietnamese battlefields, Turkish-Cypriots dead on their kitchen floors – or who are about to be shot – the abject figure with a rifle levelled at his head in the Congo in 1964.”
The Times: ***** “Don McCullin takes you back to the ground zero of politics. His images bear haunting witness to the making of history — that’s why you should go to see the new Tate Britain show.”
The Arts Desk: ***** “The darkest, most compelling exhibition you are ever likely to see.”
Londonist: ***** “It’s an exhibition that’s so strong that it deserves many superlatives to describe it, but they just don’t seem appropriate given the content of this undeniably powerful and emotional show.”
Morning Star: ***** “what is forcibly communicated by his photographs is a deep humanity and humility. He captures profound moments of human dignity and pain within the landscape of broader tragedy and he does so with the eyes of a consummate artist.”
Tate Britain’s Don McCullin exhibition is on display until the 6th May.