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Tonight's Imagine presents an intimate portrait
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of the great British war photographer and photojournalist
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Don McCullin.
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In his early 20s, and with no formal training,
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McCullin began his career here in Finsbury Park,
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photographing the violent teenage gangs ruling the roost in the 1950s.
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He would go on to capture history as it was being made,
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bearing witness to the bloodiest conflicts of the last 50 years.
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Despite announcing his retirement from the warzone ten years ago,
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after returning from Iraq,
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McCullin decided to make a trip to Syria late last year.
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He wanted to show the human side of the ongoing conflict in Aleppo,
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where, not for the first time in his career, he came under sniper fire.
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A self-confessed war junkie,
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Don McCullin's quest to bring the ugly truths of the war
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to international attention would come at great personal cost.
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Jacqui and David Morris's often graphic film
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lays bare the addiction to danger, and the commitment to justice,
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that lie at the heart of this extraordinary life.
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This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.
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War is partly madness, mostly insanity,
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and the rest of it is schizophrenia.
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You do ask yourself, "Why am I here? What's my purpose?
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"What's this got to do with photography?"
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And it goes on and on, the questioning.
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You're trying to stay alive, you're trying to take pictures,
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you're trying to justify your presence there.
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And you think, "What good is this going to do anyway?
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"These people have already been killed."
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There were many battles within my own mind,
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before I got to these major conflicts.
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And when I got there, I was even more confused.
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I try to stay calm.
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I try not to indulge myself in this picture-taking.
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It was something I was meant to do, but how far was I allowed to take it?
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There was a lot of hypocrisy spinning around
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inside my own mind at the time.
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I didn't really think, um, it was right to be there,
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because I sometimes felt that
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the people who were doing these terrible things
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thought, you know, that I was OK-ing it,
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which I certainly wasn't.
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The first execution I ever saw in my life
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was a dawn execution of a bomber who had killed a load of people
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in the Saigon market a few weeks before.
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And there were all these photographers and journalists,
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they were all on this Jeep, you couldn't get another man on,
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and there was nowhere I could see. But I saw the event.
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They brought the man, in a Volkswagen truck.
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He got out and screamed anti-Americans.
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The firing squad shot him.
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A man stepped forward, grabbed a turf of his hair,
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and shot him through the brains.
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And I stood there with my mouth wide open.
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And I heard a man saying,
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"God, that was great stuff, did you get it, did you get it?"
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And I have never forgotten, to this day, and that was in 1965,
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and I didn't get it.
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And I never said anything about this situation
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to the people in the Sunday Times, because they would have thought
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I must have been a rank amateur not to have got such a picture.
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But, looking back,
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did I have the right to take that man's picture of his murder?
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Because, in a way, public executions are nothing less than murder.
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And I didn't get the picture.
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MUSIC AND APPLAUSE
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You came from a fairly rough background, didn't you, in London?
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It seems an unlikely ambition to have, your first ambition,
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to be a painter. Was that regarded as a bit sissy?
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Well, yes, it was, because where I live,
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you were expected to take on anybody.
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You'd never back down from an argument.
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I used to get some terrible hidings when I was a boy.
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But my father, when he was alive,
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he used to let me draw on the kitchen wall.
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And I'd actually stick pieces of paper on the wall,
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but I went over the edge, so there was always
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empty pictures with marvellous edges.
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RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER
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I lived in a house that was a tenement house,
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so we could knock huge nails in the walls and stick things on the walls.
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I wouldn't let my kids do it now but...
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My art career didn't last very long,
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because I got a junior art scholarship,
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and my father died and I had to go to work.
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MUSIC: "Move It" by Cliff Richard
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# Come on, pretty baby, let's move it and a-groove it
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# Well, shake, oh, baby, shake, oh, honey, please don't lose it
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# It's rhythm that gets into your heart and soul
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# Well, let me tell you, baby, it's called rock'n'roll. #
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I took a set of pictures of the boys I grew up with.
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They were involved in the killing of a policeman.
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They didn't actually kill the policeman,
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the rival gang that came from Islington,
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they were responsible for that killing.
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So, I took the photos to the Observer.
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They asked me to do more. I did more.
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They published the photos.
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They gave me the princely sum of £50.
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In those days, £50 from where I came from was like five weeks' wages.
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And then, I was, I suppose you could say, I was on the road to photography
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which has been a lifelong love affair.
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It has been really an amazing experience for me.
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Because you've got to remember, I don't have any education,
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I couldn't read properly.
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I came from a violent background where people were mostly interested
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in how well you could fight or steal, or do harm to society.
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So, quite honestly, having this amazing door opening, someone saying,
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"There's your freedom from ignorance and bigotry and violence."
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It was amazing I managed to escape from Finsbury Park.
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I've often wondered, how did he get that first memorable,
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urban landscape of the lads, the gang,
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The Guv'nors, as they were called in East London,
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standing in a derelict house?
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Perfectly framed by the building,
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and seeing right through the building.
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It was so emblematic of gang warfare and the roughness of London.
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And here we have a picture which is almost beautiful in its composition.
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You could say, there is no beauty in what this gang was up to.
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But he related, he had a sensitivity.
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An empathy is something you can't fake.
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This is the bloke I gave a good hiding to.
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HE LAUGHS
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He tried to hit me with a brick.
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We had all been to a funeral.
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One of the little girls had committed suicide,
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put her head in a gas oven over some bloke I grew up with.
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We came back from the funeral, and he ran past my car
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and snapped the wing mirror off.
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And he was peeing in this alleyway,
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that's when I should really have laid into him, while he was peeing,
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because it's difficult to fight back if you're in a situation like that.
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Then he picked a brick up, came roaring at me.
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Then I managed to get hold of it and reverse the charges.
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Wasn't I lucky to have grown up in a period of the '60s, '70s, the '80s,
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when it was all happening?
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It was as if, like it was carved out for me, really.
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I did grasp the nettle,
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I didn't just look at it and think, "God, I wish I was there."
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I used to say, "I'm going to go there." And I did.
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- NEWSREEL:
- Paris in the spring of 1961,
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and the time of President Kennedy's visit, was as beautiful as ever.
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I was in Paris with my wife, my new wife really,
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we'd only been married a few weeks.
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And I was like a fish out of water really,
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because I couldn't speak the language.
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And whilst we were in Paris, I saw somebody reading a newspaper.
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It was a photograph of an East German soldier
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jumping over some barbed wire, which was only, at that stage,
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separating them from the West.
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Of course, the story had been building up,
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potentially been building up.
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I looked at this photograph, it was a memorable picture.
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And I said to her, "When we get back to England,"
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knowing I only had £70 in my savings account,
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"would you mind if I went to Berlin?"
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And she said, "Of course I don't mind."
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- NEWSREEL:
- The East Germans don't seem to have girders enough
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to plug every hole.
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When a soldier's attention is diverted by others,
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a hole is cut in the barbed wire,
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and Khrushchev's face is slapped again.
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I rang the Observer newspaper, and they said,
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"We're not interested in you going."
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And I said, "Well, I bought the ticket." There was no commission.
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So, I got near to a place called Friedrichstrasse,
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which was the centre of all the problem.
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The Americans were facing the Russians.
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There were tanks facing each other.
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At that stage, in Friedrichstrasse,
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they were actually building the beginnings of the Berlin Wall.
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This was really the right place to be.
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- NEWSREEL:
- Camera crews are harassed by reflecting mirrors
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held by East German police.
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Water hoses are played on equipment.
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Nevertheless, our reporters are able to come up with remarkable pictures,
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despite these hazards.
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My camera equipment wasn't very good, actually.
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I had a camera I had bought during my time in the air force.
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It was totally the wrong shape
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to give me the kind of pictures that I needed.
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But, nevertheless, I stretched the use of this camera, kneeling down
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and holding it up high and doing all kinds of funny things with it.
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By the time that I'd been there a few days,
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that wall went up pretty fast. And people could not escape.
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And I looked at East German soldiers
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leaning out of buildings on the other side of the wall, with binoculars.
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And looking right at me. And I thought,
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"They can't hurt me, because they're over there and I'm here."
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It was very exciting, it was at the heightened part of the Cold War
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where the Russians were quite prepared
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to make a stand against the West, and vice versa.
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What it really comes down to is that I was sitting on top of
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the most important news story in the world.
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And it was my decision,
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this intuition that took me there in the first place.
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So, I was beginning to show signs of having a brain
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that was functioning in the right direction.
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I came back to England with the film
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and got it processed in the Observer's darkroom.
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And they saw the pictures and they ran half a page of my story.
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The story was then entered into the news category
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for the News Pictures of the Year. And I won this award.
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And the Observer gave me a contract after that.
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So, I started getting better jobs at the Observer.
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I started going to all kinds of political rallies and things.
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I would go to the East End of London
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and photograph disturbances with Oswald Mosley, situations like that.
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It was a developing and an expanding situation
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for the early part of my career.
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- NEWSREEL:
- The tinderbox that is Cyprus threatens to erupt
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into a full-scale war.
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Greek students demonstrate against British and US proposals
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that a force of NATO troops help maintain a truce on the island
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until differences between Greeks and Turks can be resolved.
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I walked into the Observer office one day, and the editor said to me,
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"How would you consider covering the civil war for us in Cyprus?"
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And at that point in my life, I wasn't ready.
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And I felt that, when I think about those words, I think,
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I must have been levitating. I felt as if I was rising off the ground.
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I knew that the second door was opening.
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- NEWSREEL:
- The terror of civil war struck Cyprus in December.
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On Boxing Day, the British came in to stop the bloodshed.
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So, I thought, I'm going to do my best here.
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And I'm going to make an impression. This is my big chance.
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So, I went to the Turkish community.
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And they were surrounded by the Greeks.
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I managed to slip past the roadblocks and get in.
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I could hear gunfire.
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That was the first time I had heard, in my life, hostile gunfire.
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And then, suddenly, out of the cinema burst a man with a machine gun,
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and he had a raincoat on and a flat hat.
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And he looked like something like a Sicilian Mafioso bandit.
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And then people ran out with mattresses on their heads,
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women and children, as if a mattress would stop a bullet.
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And this was my baptism of war.
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I had to assess very quickly what was going on,
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where the fire was coming from.
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As the day wore on, we were trapped in these empty streets.
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There were groups of fighters, Turkish defenders.
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And funny, curious things caught my eye.
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I could remember a group of men behind barricades.
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00:15:49,314 --> 00:15:51,981
It was almost like the Spanish Civil War, really.
244
00:15:51,981 --> 00:15:57,106
And by the barricade, there were men with an ill-assorted bunch of weapons
245
00:15:57,106 --> 00:16:02,523
and old, almost muskety-looking kind of museum pieces.
246
00:16:02,523 --> 00:16:08,565
But standing near this group of men was a beautiful dog.
247
00:16:14,649 --> 00:16:18,858
I thought, "Why is it that these things come to you,
248
00:16:18,858 --> 00:16:22,024
"when you should be thinking about more serious things?"
249
00:16:22,024 --> 00:16:26,941
But to be truthful, these little things sometimes tell you
250
00:16:26,941 --> 00:16:31,983
much more about a story than the obvious things.
251
00:16:31,983 --> 00:16:35,650
So, I think what I'm getting down to here is,
252
00:16:35,650 --> 00:16:37,609
we're talking about sensitivity.
253
00:16:40,192 --> 00:16:44,693
What I had to realise at the time, I was learning a new trade.
254
00:16:46,359 --> 00:16:50,151
I was learning about the price of humanity and its sufferings.
255
00:16:54,693 --> 00:16:57,818
- NEWSREEL:
- Now, four months later, the armed forces of both sides
256
00:16:57,818 --> 00:17:01,652
are still defying the UN's attempts to keep the peace.
257
00:17:01,652 --> 00:17:06,069
And the Cyprus situation is as dangerous and complex as ever.
258
00:17:06,069 --> 00:17:08,236
The UN is powerless to do anything
259
00:17:08,236 --> 00:17:11,736
that would really help restore law and order.
260
00:17:15,278 --> 00:17:18,778
I saw a whole village trying to evacuate, they were being attacked,
261
00:17:18,778 --> 00:17:23,070
to somewhere with more safety, like a school building.
262
00:17:23,070 --> 00:17:27,487
And there was this one old lady, who was lame, and she had two sticks.
263
00:17:27,487 --> 00:17:30,279
And she really couldn't get those legs moving.
264
00:17:30,279 --> 00:17:32,945
And there was a British soldier trying to coax her along,
265
00:17:32,945 --> 00:17:37,029
persuade her to hurry up before she'd probably lose her life.
266
00:17:37,029 --> 00:17:39,863
And I was with a friend of mine, I said, "This is ridiculous."
267
00:17:39,863 --> 00:17:42,238
I took one picture of the soldier and the old lady,
268
00:17:42,238 --> 00:17:43,404
and I put my cameras down.
269
00:17:43,404 --> 00:17:46,446
And I scooped this old lady up in my arms.
270
00:17:46,446 --> 00:17:50,155
It was like scooping up some rag doll that had fallen from a child's pram.
271
00:17:50,155 --> 00:17:53,822
I just ran and ran with her. I don't know why I did it.
272
00:17:53,822 --> 00:17:57,864
But I didn't really want to see that old lady shot down and killed.
273
00:17:57,864 --> 00:18:02,614
And I went back to my position as a photographer, and I carried on.
274
00:18:02,614 --> 00:18:04,406
But it made me feel good.
275
00:18:04,406 --> 00:18:08,198
I it made me feel as if I wasn't just there as a voyeur
276
00:18:08,198 --> 00:18:13,365
that was enjoying other people's misery and possible deaths.
277
00:18:13,365 --> 00:18:15,990
It's a very fine line.
278
00:18:15,990 --> 00:18:20,073
I've been constantly accused of taking terrible pictures
279
00:18:20,073 --> 00:18:22,573
and people saying, "Did you ever help anyone?"
280
00:18:22,573 --> 00:18:26,699
Of course I did. But I don't want to brag about it.
281
00:18:26,699 --> 00:18:30,074
I did it sometimes to clear my own conscience.
282
00:18:46,117 --> 00:18:48,867
These little battles were erupting all over
283
00:18:48,867 --> 00:18:53,284
the northern part of the island of Cyprus, where the Turks lived.
284
00:18:53,284 --> 00:18:55,950
We saw this soldier looking at the bodies, and I said,
285
00:18:55,950 --> 00:18:59,909
"What's happening?" He said, "There's been some killing," he said,
286
00:18:59,909 --> 00:19:04,784
"There's a dead body up there and some more in that house."
287
00:19:04,784 --> 00:19:08,910
I knocked on the door, I tapped on this door and there was no answer.
288
00:19:10,285 --> 00:19:12,951
And I let myself in.
289
00:19:12,951 --> 00:19:17,702
And the first thing I was greeted with was warm blood.
290
00:19:21,327 --> 00:19:23,619
These men had been murdered the day before,
291
00:19:23,619 --> 00:19:26,619
and the warm, early morning sunlight had penetrated through
292
00:19:26,619 --> 00:19:29,161
the glass door of this house.
293
00:19:29,161 --> 00:19:32,328
And I closed the door and I tiptoed around the room,
294
00:19:32,328 --> 00:19:35,911
and I got myself in a corner, and I was taking the first shot.
295
00:19:35,911 --> 00:19:39,828
And suddenly, the door opened and, to my horror, the whole family burst in.
296
00:19:42,328 --> 00:19:47,579
I thought, my God, they're going to be really cross, finding me in here.
297
00:19:47,579 --> 00:19:53,037
To my astonishment, they weren't, so I carried on photographing.
298
00:19:53,037 --> 00:19:56,704
And there was a woman who started screaming like mad.
299
00:19:56,704 --> 00:20:00,454
And the truth was that it was her husband who was just below my feet,
300
00:20:00,454 --> 00:20:04,621
who was dead. A new husband at that, they had only been married a week.
301
00:20:04,621 --> 00:20:09,080
And the Greeks came the day before and attacked this community
302
00:20:09,080 --> 00:20:12,288
and murdered these people in cold blood in this house.
303
00:20:18,372 --> 00:20:24,081
I'd go into a village one day, and I got there in the early morning.
304
00:20:24,081 --> 00:20:26,789
And they were finding bodies of Turkish men
305
00:20:26,789 --> 00:20:28,373
who were defending the villages.
306
00:20:28,373 --> 00:20:30,498
And then they were coming back to the village
307
00:20:30,498 --> 00:20:32,956
and telling women that their husbands had been killed.
308
00:20:32,956 --> 00:20:36,623
And then you saw these Goya-esque kind of poses
309
00:20:36,623 --> 00:20:39,498
of people looking up to Christ.
310
00:20:39,498 --> 00:20:42,040
I've noticed that a lot in wars.
311
00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:46,457
When people are in deep grief and emotion, they look up
312
00:20:46,457 --> 00:20:50,707
as if they can see God himself there, offering them some help.
313
00:20:50,707 --> 00:20:53,916
And you see that in Goya's drawings.
314
00:20:53,916 --> 00:20:56,333
Before men are being shot or massacred,
315
00:20:56,333 --> 00:20:58,333
they look up, or they are praying,
316
00:20:58,333 --> 00:21:02,958
and it's part of that religious nature of the great painters.
317
00:21:04,958 --> 00:21:07,792
That moment is so classic.
318
00:21:07,792 --> 00:21:11,334
I call it one of the decisive moments in photography.
319
00:21:11,334 --> 00:21:15,917
Because it combines the news moments with the compositional elements
320
00:21:15,917 --> 00:21:18,292
which make a photograph in themselves.
321
00:21:18,292 --> 00:21:23,501
So, there is something, a second or two would have made a difference.
322
00:21:25,835 --> 00:21:28,376
I asked Don how he took the picture.
323
00:21:28,376 --> 00:21:32,710
As I recall it, he actually had to fall to his knees quickly to get it
324
00:21:32,710 --> 00:21:35,377
because he just sensed it was coming.
325
00:21:43,377 --> 00:21:46,877
I mean, OK, I talk as if there's a lot of poetry in me.
326
00:21:46,877 --> 00:21:50,878
There isn't. I'm a photographer. I am neither an artist or a poet.
327
00:21:50,878 --> 00:21:53,295
I'm a photographer.
328
00:21:53,295 --> 00:21:58,253
And one of the things I've learned most of all, erm,
329
00:21:58,253 --> 00:22:00,837
over and above photography,
330
00:22:00,837 --> 00:22:05,670
the very best qualifications you can have when you are in this situation,
331
00:22:05,670 --> 00:22:09,712
and you are exercising this duty as a photographer, or whatever, reporter,
332
00:22:09,712 --> 00:22:15,546
is that it's much better to be on the side of humanity.
333
00:22:18,004 --> 00:22:22,130
All this was coming at me so fast, this responsibility.
334
00:22:22,130 --> 00:22:25,755
And I felt, almost from the word go, I got a grip of it,
335
00:22:25,755 --> 00:22:28,922
and I thought, I understand what I'm doing for the first time.
336
00:22:28,922 --> 00:22:30,672
I'm meant to be doing this.
337
00:23:23,508 --> 00:23:26,300
There was a decree put out that journalists were not allowed
338
00:23:26,300 --> 00:23:30,009
to leave Leopoldville.
339
00:23:30,009 --> 00:23:32,967
And then I thought, here I am, all this way out here in the Congo
340
00:23:32,967 --> 00:23:36,176
and now I can't even leave out of the capital.
341
00:23:36,176 --> 00:23:38,759
So, I had it in mind, and I knew that there were mercenaries
342
00:23:38,759 --> 00:23:40,843
operating up in a place called Stanleyville.
343
00:23:40,843 --> 00:23:42,718
I quickly managed to discover all this.
344
00:23:42,718 --> 00:23:44,718
I've been appointed by Mr Tchombe
345
00:23:44,718 --> 00:23:47,301
to recruit a number, which I can't disclose,
346
00:23:47,301 --> 00:23:50,718
of men to form a fighting unit in the Congo,
347
00:23:50,718 --> 00:23:52,385
to dispel the present rebellion.
348
00:23:52,385 --> 00:23:54,302
"Mercenary" is a dirty word.
349
00:23:54,302 --> 00:23:57,219
This unit is going to change the meaning of that word,
350
00:23:57,219 --> 00:24:00,511
and "mercenary" will now be a badge of honour,
351
00:24:00,511 --> 00:24:04,386
rather than a dirty word in the English language.
352
00:24:04,386 --> 00:24:08,011
I met one of these mercenaries, and his name was Alan Murphy.
353
00:24:08,011 --> 00:24:11,095
And I said, "Could you get me some information about this?"
354
00:24:11,095 --> 00:24:13,553
And I pumped him for how to get there.
355
00:24:13,553 --> 00:24:16,303
And he said, what happens was, every morning,
356
00:24:16,303 --> 00:24:20,012
a C130 American plane, under the CIA,
357
00:24:20,012 --> 00:24:25,179
would take groups of mercenaries to Stanleyville.
358
00:24:25,179 --> 00:24:28,304
And I said, "Could you get me one of your shirts and a pair of trousers,
359
00:24:28,304 --> 00:24:30,304
"and if I sleep overnight in the hotel,
360
00:24:30,304 --> 00:24:33,679
"would you kick my bed in the morning when you get the call to leave?"
361
00:24:33,679 --> 00:24:36,221
And he did just that.
362
00:24:36,221 --> 00:24:41,388
And I see myself now, many, 40 years ago, standing on that runway
363
00:24:41,388 --> 00:24:44,847
with the early-morning rain shower that had passed.
364
00:24:44,847 --> 00:24:48,055
And a man with a clipboard, who happened to be a CIA man,
365
00:24:48,055 --> 00:24:53,430
asking people's names. And I thought, I've had it. I've had it, you know.
366
00:24:53,430 --> 00:24:56,139
Then he came up to me and he said, "What's your name?"
367
00:24:56,139 --> 00:24:59,264
And I said, "McCullin." He said, "You're not on the list."
368
00:24:59,264 --> 00:25:01,473
I said, "I should be," and my legs were like jelly.
369
00:25:01,473 --> 00:25:04,889
And he said, he wrote my name down, he said, "OK, climb aboard."
370
00:25:04,889 --> 00:25:08,890
And I'd cracked this amazing no-go situation.
371
00:26:04,018 --> 00:26:05,810
When I arrived in Stanleyville,
372
00:26:05,810 --> 00:26:08,352
I could hear a lot of shouting and screaming,
373
00:26:08,352 --> 00:26:11,852
people crying and gunfire.
374
00:26:11,852 --> 00:26:16,644
And I saw gangs of boys who had been tied up, and they were being beaten
375
00:26:16,644 --> 00:26:19,269
and shot in the back of the head and kicked into the river.
376
00:26:19,269 --> 00:26:20,769
I was looking at all this.
377
00:26:20,769 --> 00:26:24,353
I had my little camera in my bag, and 20 rolls of film.
378
00:26:24,353 --> 00:26:27,353
And I thought, how am I going to bring my camera out now
379
00:26:27,353 --> 00:26:30,436
and declare that I shouldn't be here and I'm not a mercenary?
380
00:26:30,436 --> 00:26:32,478
Because it was a huge gamble.
381
00:26:38,395 --> 00:26:43,312
And it was the Congolese gendarmerie who were killing these people,
382
00:26:43,312 --> 00:26:46,854
torturing them, dragging them behind trucks on wires,
383
00:26:46,854 --> 00:26:48,521
it was really terrible.
384
00:26:48,521 --> 00:26:50,729
They were skinned alive, some of them.
385
00:26:56,646 --> 00:27:00,271
It was a kind of wood yard, and they were sitting in a corner, shivering.
386
00:27:00,271 --> 00:27:03,272
Knowing that any moment, they would be shot.
387
00:27:06,230 --> 00:27:09,147
And then they dragged some of these boys out in front of me
388
00:27:09,147 --> 00:27:11,731
and started brutalising them.
389
00:27:12,897 --> 00:27:15,897
And I had no power, by the way, to prevent this.
390
00:27:18,814 --> 00:27:20,606
I took a few pictures and I walked away.
391
00:27:20,606 --> 00:27:26,023
I thought, you know, you have a moral sense of purpose and duty.
392
00:27:26,023 --> 00:27:31,190
You have to work out which of those purposes and duty you are there for.
393
00:27:31,190 --> 00:27:33,482
It's very difficult too.
394
00:27:33,482 --> 00:27:37,857
You want to take this picture, and you want to stop it.
395
00:27:37,857 --> 00:27:40,357
And it's a very difficult thing.
396
00:27:40,357 --> 00:27:42,357
It came up more and more my life,
397
00:27:42,357 --> 00:27:44,649
seeing people executed in front of me.
398
00:27:51,233 --> 00:27:52,816
GUNFIRE
399
00:27:59,192 --> 00:28:02,525
RAPID GUNFIRE
400
00:28:02,525 --> 00:28:05,317
There was a man called Mike Hoare
401
00:28:05,317 --> 00:28:09,276
who was battling on the other side of this river, the Lualaba.
402
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:12,734
He was in charge of Fifth Commando,
403
00:28:12,734 --> 00:28:15,276
these mercenaries I had teamed up with.
404
00:28:15,276 --> 00:28:18,068
So, I arrived on the other side.
405
00:28:18,068 --> 00:28:21,776
And then, Mike Hoare came to me and said,
406
00:28:21,776 --> 00:28:25,027
"What are you doing, who are you? Where have you come from?"
407
00:28:25,027 --> 00:28:28,360
And I said, "I have to be clean with you now,
408
00:28:28,360 --> 00:28:30,777
"I'm working for the Observer newspaper."
409
00:28:30,777 --> 00:28:34,069
He wouldn't have understood the German magazine, Quick.
410
00:28:34,069 --> 00:28:38,527
I immediately fell back on my English heritage.
411
00:28:38,527 --> 00:28:40,611
So, he said, "I'll deal with you in the morning,
412
00:28:40,611 --> 00:28:43,653
"I'm going to hand you over to the Congolese military."
413
00:28:43,653 --> 00:28:48,445
Which one knew right away, that would be curtains.
414
00:28:50,070 --> 00:28:54,778
He said, "I admire what you have done, but I don't condone it."
415
00:28:54,778 --> 00:28:58,112
And then he totally switched his whole kind of attitude
416
00:28:58,112 --> 00:29:00,904
and offered to take me on this journey
417
00:29:00,904 --> 00:29:04,987
chasing these Simbas who had abducted these nuns.
418
00:29:04,987 --> 00:29:08,821
And they were cutting them to pieces with machetes on the way down,
419
00:29:08,821 --> 00:29:10,529
as they were fleeing from us.
420
00:29:13,446 --> 00:29:15,530
And we caught up with them.
421
00:29:27,780 --> 00:29:29,864
There was goodness in Mike Hoare,
422
00:29:29,864 --> 00:29:34,281
but there wasn't much goodness in what he stood for, really.
423
00:29:34,281 --> 00:29:37,114
He was there for the adventure and the money.
424
00:29:49,282 --> 00:29:52,657
There was one mercenary Rhodesian and I was sleeping in the same room
425
00:29:52,657 --> 00:29:56,115
and he had a whole box of stuff and I said, "Where did you get that?"
426
00:29:56,115 --> 00:30:01,116
He said, "I've just blown the bank in town but there was no money in it, unfortunately."
427
00:30:05,949 --> 00:30:07,991
Halfway through the night, I heard gunfire
428
00:30:07,991 --> 00:30:09,700
and I woke up in a great sweat.
429
00:30:09,700 --> 00:30:12,825
This Rhodesian had got drunk and shot these two African boys,
430
00:30:12,825 --> 00:30:15,158
who were doing all the laundry and the cooking
431
00:30:15,158 --> 00:30:18,533
for these mercenaries for breakfast.
432
00:30:18,533 --> 00:30:20,950
I remember looking at one of these poor black boys,
433
00:30:20,950 --> 00:30:24,284
he was about 12 years old and his eyes were open.
434
00:30:24,284 --> 00:30:27,909
And I looked at the mercenary and he said, "They asked for it.
435
00:30:27,909 --> 00:30:31,743
"I found a weapon on them." Which wasn't true.
436
00:30:32,868 --> 00:30:35,284
You know, some of these mercenaries,
437
00:30:35,284 --> 00:30:38,743
they just had a lust for killing Africans.
438
00:30:38,743 --> 00:30:41,410
HE MOANS
439
00:30:41,410 --> 00:30:43,118
I hated them in the end.
440
00:30:44,243 --> 00:30:46,243
GUNSHOT/HE SHOUTS
441
00:30:51,285 --> 00:30:54,161
When I came away from these atrocities, I kept thinking,
442
00:30:54,161 --> 00:30:56,494
"How am I going to get through this?"
443
00:30:56,494 --> 00:30:59,744
I love what I'm doing, I love photography but, you know,
444
00:30:59,744 --> 00:31:04,036
this other stuff is really too awful to live with, you know.
445
00:31:04,036 --> 00:31:07,036
And sometimes people used to say to me, "Do you have nightmares?"
446
00:31:07,036 --> 00:31:08,995
I would say, "No.
447
00:31:08,995 --> 00:31:13,162
"Only in the daytime, when my eyes are open and I'm awake
448
00:31:13,162 --> 00:31:16,704
"and my memory is, you know, on full alert."
449
00:31:16,704 --> 00:31:21,537
So when I see... I love photography,
450
00:31:21,537 --> 00:31:25,913
I love being in my darkroom, but even my darkroom is a haunted place.
451
00:31:25,913 --> 00:31:29,788
I go in there with the red light and it's like being in a womb
452
00:31:29,788 --> 00:31:34,580
and I play that music, which is only classical music,
453
00:31:34,580 --> 00:31:38,788
it somehow pleases me, but at the same moment,
454
00:31:38,788 --> 00:31:42,289
it takes me down and down and down to where I don't want to go.
455
00:31:42,289 --> 00:31:45,080
It's like as if I'm drowning in a very deep ocean...
456
00:31:46,455 --> 00:31:50,039
..and I'm trying to get back to the top again to see the daylight.
457
00:31:50,039 --> 00:31:53,789
So, you know, I don't just take photographs. I think.
458
00:31:53,789 --> 00:31:55,914
CLASSICAL MUSIC
459
00:32:23,416 --> 00:32:25,500
I would come back to Finsbury Park,
460
00:32:25,500 --> 00:32:27,583
because unfortunately,
461
00:32:27,583 --> 00:32:31,542
I was still living in quite poor circumstances with my new wife.
462
00:32:31,542 --> 00:32:35,292
And then, when there were odd days when I had nothing to do,
463
00:32:35,292 --> 00:32:39,875
I would go to the Wimpy bar and hang out with the same tribe, you know.
464
00:32:39,875 --> 00:32:43,667
And then they would say, "Where have you been lately?"
465
00:32:43,667 --> 00:32:46,834
I'd say, "I've been to the Congo with the mercenaries."
466
00:32:46,834 --> 00:32:49,459
And they would try to humour me...
467
00:32:50,668 --> 00:32:53,710
..but basically, they were almost putting me down,
468
00:32:53,710 --> 00:32:56,876
as if I was living in a Walter Mitty world.
469
00:33:02,377 --> 00:33:05,877
I did about four and a half years on the Observer
470
00:33:05,877 --> 00:33:10,086
and things were beginning to slow down for me and I could also...
471
00:33:10,086 --> 00:33:12,919
I started getting the taste and the need
472
00:33:12,919 --> 00:33:16,294
to do much bigger, you know, international stories.
473
00:33:17,544 --> 00:33:21,170
And a friend of mine called David King,
474
00:33:21,170 --> 00:33:26,087
who worked at the Sunday Times, said to me,
475
00:33:26,087 --> 00:33:27,878
"Why don't you come and join us?
476
00:33:27,878 --> 00:33:31,003
"Why don't you come and do some work for us? I'll give you work."
477
00:33:31,003 --> 00:33:34,129
So I did and he sent me off to the Mississippi.
478
00:33:34,129 --> 00:33:36,254
BLUES MUSIC
479
00:33:47,504 --> 00:33:51,088
It was an amazing part of the world, the Mississippi.
480
00:33:51,088 --> 00:33:53,296
They had the sharecroppers,
481
00:33:53,296 --> 00:33:55,797
the black people who brought in the cotton,
482
00:33:55,797 --> 00:34:00,714
living in shacks and sheds, and then you had New Orleans,
483
00:34:00,714 --> 00:34:07,589
where we basically, we arrived in New Orleans and it was amazing to see.
484
00:34:22,298 --> 00:34:25,507
And there was a Ku Klux Klan rally one night.
485
00:34:25,507 --> 00:34:27,924
It was like Hollywood.
486
00:34:27,924 --> 00:34:30,049
There was the big fire cross burning,
487
00:34:30,049 --> 00:34:33,424
these rather hateful people in these ridiculous kind of outfits,
488
00:34:33,424 --> 00:34:35,507
smoking huge cigars and basically
489
00:34:35,507 --> 00:34:42,133
saying, "Welcome," but, you know, at the same time intimidating us.
490
00:34:44,341 --> 00:34:47,841
I managed to, you know, get a few pictures, which David King,
491
00:34:47,841 --> 00:34:51,217
when I came back, put together.
492
00:34:51,217 --> 00:34:53,967
You know, you can take amazing pictures,
493
00:34:53,967 --> 00:34:56,342
but you still need to have them presented
494
00:34:56,342 --> 00:35:00,676
in a way that the public can accept them and understand them.
495
00:35:01,801 --> 00:35:04,967
That was my first assignment for the Sunday Times.
496
00:35:22,135 --> 00:35:25,594
Roy Thompson was not a journalist himself,
497
00:35:25,594 --> 00:35:29,219
but he was the best friend journalism ever had.
498
00:35:29,219 --> 00:35:32,261
He was very proud of his newspapers
499
00:35:32,261 --> 00:35:34,969
and he was so proud of their independence,
500
00:35:34,969 --> 00:35:39,386
he had a card printed which he carried in his pocket.
501
00:35:39,386 --> 00:35:41,511
So when Roy Thompson was attacked,
502
00:35:41,511 --> 00:35:43,470
"Why are you papers publishing this?"
503
00:35:43,470 --> 00:35:46,678
or, "Why are you putting these war photographs in the colour magazine?
504
00:35:46,678 --> 00:35:49,220
"We advertisers don't like it."
505
00:35:49,220 --> 00:35:52,845
He would pause and take out of his pocket a little card
506
00:35:52,845 --> 00:35:56,846
and it said, it was a kind of oath he'd made, you know,
507
00:35:56,846 --> 00:36:01,763
"The newspapers that I control will always be independent
508
00:36:01,763 --> 00:36:05,721
"and will run professionally and I do not interfere in them."
509
00:36:05,721 --> 00:36:08,846
So he would put the card back in his pocket and would say,
510
00:36:08,846 --> 00:36:13,055
"You wouldn't expect me to go against my own word, would you?"
511
00:36:13,055 --> 00:36:16,764
I was very privileged because I worked on the colour magazine,
512
00:36:16,764 --> 00:36:21,889
which was directly associated with the Sunday Times newspaper.
513
00:36:21,889 --> 00:36:25,056
And I had equally wonderful people there
514
00:36:25,056 --> 00:36:29,806
who allowed me to just disappear and come back several weeks later
515
00:36:29,806 --> 00:36:33,223
and on top of all that, allow me to edit my own material.
516
00:36:33,223 --> 00:36:37,556
He knew he had the confidence that if he did his part
517
00:36:37,556 --> 00:36:41,557
and took his photographs and reported with integrity
518
00:36:41,557 --> 00:36:44,932
and accuracy and with a sense of composition,
519
00:36:44,932 --> 00:36:48,015
that it wasn't going to be interfered with
520
00:36:48,015 --> 00:36:51,182
or rejected because of some other concerns.
521
00:36:51,182 --> 00:36:55,891
He trusted me and so it meant that I would try that much harder
522
00:36:55,891 --> 00:36:58,558
for people who gave me this wonderful freedom.
523
00:36:58,558 --> 00:37:02,350
So Roy Thomson, backing his editors,
524
00:37:02,350 --> 00:37:05,100
was crucial to the career of Don McCullin.
525
00:37:05,100 --> 00:37:07,475
MUSIC: "Tin Soldier" by The Small Faces
526
00:37:23,268 --> 00:37:25,559
The '60s were packed with opportunities
527
00:37:25,559 --> 00:37:27,643
if you wanted to go to war.
528
00:37:31,643 --> 00:37:37,352
# I am a little tin soldier that wants to jump into your fire... #
529
00:37:42,435 --> 00:37:44,769
Israeli soldiers, fresh from street fighting,
530
00:37:44,769 --> 00:37:46,769
snapped one another at the Wailing Wall.
531
00:37:46,769 --> 00:37:49,644
Pictures for girlfriends, or people from Tel Aviv.
532
00:37:51,519 --> 00:37:55,103
# All I need is treat me like a man
533
00:37:55,103 --> 00:37:57,853
# Cos I ain't no child... #
534
00:37:57,853 --> 00:37:59,978
If they think that I've come back happy,
535
00:37:59,978 --> 00:38:03,603
they know that I've got something ghastly to show.
536
00:38:04,645 --> 00:38:06,937
And if I've got something ghastly to show,
537
00:38:06,937 --> 00:38:10,104
it means that I'm trying to get the message over to people
538
00:38:10,104 --> 00:38:13,646
that even though I like being in a war and I like being there
539
00:38:13,646 --> 00:38:16,104
because it's a great adventure for me,
540
00:38:16,104 --> 00:38:20,604
my duty is to be there for a reason, not just to have a bloody good time.
541
00:38:20,604 --> 00:38:23,563
I covered the battle of the citadel of Hue,
542
00:38:23,563 --> 00:38:25,646
which was the biggest battle I'd ever been in.
543
00:38:25,646 --> 00:38:28,647
I mean, I wouldn't like to go through a year without being in a war.
544
00:38:28,647 --> 00:38:30,855
And it went on for two weeks
545
00:38:30,855 --> 00:38:35,564
and that was really the beginning of real madness.
546
00:38:35,564 --> 00:38:37,730
I'm getting a bit bad, really,
547
00:38:37,730 --> 00:38:41,439
because I'm looking forward to doing two wars a year
548
00:38:41,439 --> 00:38:44,689
and if I start looking forward to doing two or even more a year,
549
00:38:44,689 --> 00:38:46,814
I'm not going to survive.
550
00:38:50,106 --> 00:38:52,773
CLASSICAL MUSIC
551
00:38:54,190 --> 00:38:56,232
GUNFIRE
552
00:39:32,025 --> 00:39:34,025
Sleeping next to dead bodies.
553
00:39:34,025 --> 00:39:37,859
Looking at men who had been run over by tanks
554
00:39:37,859 --> 00:39:40,526
and looked like Persian carpets in the road.
555
00:39:40,526 --> 00:39:43,776
People with their brains hanging out.
556
00:39:44,818 --> 00:39:48,526
Living under tables and sleeping in rat-infested rooms.
557
00:39:50,151 --> 00:39:54,318
It was like, basically, going into total madness and insanity.
558
00:39:56,068 --> 00:39:58,944
I stood for two weeks in that battle,
559
00:39:58,944 --> 00:40:02,027
watching dozens and dozens of American soldiers being killed
560
00:40:02,027 --> 00:40:04,277
and wounded and being dragged towards me.
561
00:40:04,277 --> 00:40:08,361
They looked as if they'd been taken from a butcher's shop, with blood everywhere.
562
00:40:08,361 --> 00:40:12,486
In the end, I became totally mad, free,
563
00:40:12,486 --> 00:40:15,195
running around like a tormented animal.
564
00:40:15,195 --> 00:40:17,236
CLASSICAL MUSIC
565
00:40:23,487 --> 00:40:26,612
I've got to make sure that when they look at my pictures,
566
00:40:26,612 --> 00:40:29,029
if it's on a Sunday morning after breakfast,
567
00:40:29,029 --> 00:40:31,154
that it's going to hit them hard.
568
00:40:44,530 --> 00:40:47,530
The very first man I saw in that Battle of Hue
569
00:40:47,530 --> 00:40:50,613
had been hit in the face with two bullets.
570
00:40:50,613 --> 00:40:52,739
And he had a bandage around him.
571
00:40:52,739 --> 00:40:57,489
It looked like a child who had his porridge dripping down his face,
572
00:40:57,489 --> 00:41:01,072
through this bandage, but in fact it was blood and not porridge.
573
00:41:01,072 --> 00:41:06,114
Big, gooey chunks of human gore, just coming out of his face.
574
00:41:06,114 --> 00:41:09,240
I put my camera up to my face
575
00:41:09,240 --> 00:41:11,823
and he tried to move his head, this soldier,
576
00:41:11,823 --> 00:41:15,323
but his eyes were screaming at me not to photograph him,
577
00:41:15,323 --> 00:41:18,532
so I took my camera and went somewhere else.
578
00:41:18,532 --> 00:41:22,990
There was no shortage of, you know, human flesh to photograph that day.
579
00:41:29,907 --> 00:41:32,283
Our most vivid memory of the battle
580
00:41:32,283 --> 00:41:37,616
was that it was one of the most intense battles of the Vietnam War.
581
00:41:39,533 --> 00:41:44,117
Don came in and joined us and he just kind of showed up,
582
00:41:44,117 --> 00:41:49,659
but what was unique about Don is that the other correspondents
583
00:41:49,659 --> 00:41:54,534
and photographers would show up and, what I would say, snap and go.
584
00:41:54,534 --> 00:41:57,909
They would take their pictures and then be out of there.
585
00:41:57,909 --> 00:42:01,909
Don, for whatever the reason, decided to join with us,
586
00:42:01,909 --> 00:42:07,035
stay with us and for several days, he became one of us.
587
00:42:08,785 --> 00:42:10,993
On one occasion, on more than one occasion,
588
00:42:10,993 --> 00:42:14,869
went out at great risk to himself
589
00:42:14,869 --> 00:42:20,119
to assist with bringing some of our wounded casualties back
590
00:42:20,119 --> 00:42:22,244
to where we could evacuate them.
591
00:42:23,911 --> 00:42:28,494
His classic photo of the shell-shocked Marine
592
00:42:28,494 --> 00:42:32,453
is a Delta Company Marine.
593
00:42:32,453 --> 00:42:36,620
I dropped on my knees and photographed this man.
594
00:42:36,620 --> 00:42:41,037
I shot five frames, each one singularly.
595
00:42:41,037 --> 00:42:43,620
One, two, three, four, five.
596
00:42:45,954 --> 00:42:48,954
There is not one blink of an eyelid. There's not one change.
597
00:42:48,954 --> 00:42:52,079
All those negatives are exactly the same.
598
00:42:53,579 --> 00:42:56,829
I have kept up with a sizeable number
599
00:42:56,829 --> 00:42:58,955
of the Marines from Delta Company.
600
00:42:58,955 --> 00:43:04,997
We get together periodically and that individual has not surfaced,
601
00:43:04,997 --> 00:43:08,955
so I don't know his history from that day on.
602
00:43:13,664 --> 00:43:16,289
PIANO MUSIC
603
00:43:27,915 --> 00:43:30,040
DISTANT GUNFIRE
604
00:43:42,499 --> 00:43:44,624
I photographed this giant American
605
00:43:44,624 --> 00:43:48,374
who looked like an athlete, but he was throwing a hand grenade.
606
00:43:48,374 --> 00:43:52,874
Within seconds, this sniper hit this soldier in the hand
607
00:43:52,874 --> 00:43:55,750
and he had a hand like a cauliflower.
608
00:43:55,750 --> 00:43:58,125
It was all busted and bursting open.
609
00:43:59,833 --> 00:44:03,792
The picture itself almost defeats the anti-war feeling
610
00:44:03,792 --> 00:44:06,834
that I was trying to put across,
611
00:44:06,834 --> 00:44:09,500
because he looks the picture of manhood,
612
00:44:09,500 --> 00:44:11,834
like a javelin thrower at an Olympic event.
613
00:44:11,834 --> 00:44:13,751
Instead of that,
614
00:44:13,751 --> 00:44:18,543
he was throwing a hand grenade which was meant to bring death to others.
615
00:44:20,709 --> 00:44:22,793
DISTANT GUNFIRE
616
00:44:37,627 --> 00:44:41,002
The one meaningful picture I took in that battle
617
00:44:41,002 --> 00:44:45,586
was a man who had been hit in both legs, an American Marine.
618
00:44:45,586 --> 00:44:47,836
He was being supported by two friends
619
00:44:47,836 --> 00:44:53,170
and if ever I thought, at the very moment in my atheistic kind of mind,
620
00:44:53,170 --> 00:44:57,337
that I was looking at something purely religious, was of this man,
621
00:44:57,337 --> 00:45:01,045
who looked like Jesus Christ being taken down from the cross.
622
00:45:09,462 --> 00:45:15,129
When it was over, about 50% of the Marines were casualties.
623
00:45:17,130 --> 00:45:22,005
In my own case, I went in with a company of 120 Marines
624
00:45:22,005 --> 00:45:25,713
and sailors and at the end of the battle,
625
00:45:25,713 --> 00:45:28,464
there were 39 of us that were still standing.
626
00:45:31,714 --> 00:45:38,964
So you can see from just those shots how chaotic it was.
627
00:45:43,423 --> 00:45:46,798
After two weeks, I got back to the press centre in Da Nang
628
00:45:46,798 --> 00:45:50,382
and I realised I hadn't taken my clothes off, my underwear,
629
00:45:50,382 --> 00:45:52,090
anything off for two weeks.
630
00:45:53,173 --> 00:45:56,465
And, you know, I had a beard and I was haunted-looking.
631
00:45:56,465 --> 00:45:59,757
I took those clothes off and threw them straight into the waste bin,
632
00:45:59,757 --> 00:46:03,049
my underwear and everything I stood in, and had a shower.
633
00:46:05,883 --> 00:46:09,841
I think I could have easily broke down in that shower and cried,
634
00:46:09,841 --> 00:46:12,883
you know, I was so...
635
00:46:12,883 --> 00:46:19,425
..so drained and used and crushed by two weeks of seeing people dying.
636
00:46:20,717 --> 00:46:26,175
And you know, I think what I'm trying to say here is trying to be honest.
637
00:46:26,175 --> 00:46:31,426
You know, photography suddenly didn't come into the picture, even.
638
00:46:31,426 --> 00:46:33,968
It had nothing to do with photography.
639
00:46:33,968 --> 00:46:39,093
After a while, if you are that involved in that kind of situation,
640
00:46:39,093 --> 00:46:42,385
it's not about photography, it's about humanity.
641
00:46:42,385 --> 00:46:46,093
Still photographs do have this strong affinity
642
00:46:46,093 --> 00:46:48,218
with the way we remember, so...
643
00:46:48,218 --> 00:46:52,427
And the vibrations of a still photograph can be intense
644
00:46:52,427 --> 00:46:54,635
and can last for ever.
645
00:46:56,052 --> 00:47:00,136
I can remember that Don sometimes worries,
646
00:47:00,136 --> 00:47:05,928
I know, about, "Have I taken these risks? Is it worthwhile?"
647
00:47:05,928 --> 00:47:08,345
I can tell him it is
648
00:47:08,345 --> 00:47:13,262
because nobody can trace...it's like throwing a stone in a pond.
649
00:47:13,262 --> 00:47:15,803
The ripples go out and you can't say,
650
00:47:15,803 --> 00:47:19,970
"This ripple was caused by this stone," but they are.
651
00:47:19,970 --> 00:47:23,512
And I think the disenchantment with the Vietnam War in America
652
00:47:23,512 --> 00:47:26,721
is powerfully reinforced by some of the photographers,
653
00:47:26,721 --> 00:47:30,929
American photographers, including Don McCullin.
654
00:47:30,929 --> 00:47:37,513
Photography is the truth if it is being handled by a truthful person
655
00:47:37,513 --> 00:47:40,847
and I have to tell you that I have a lot of integrity.
656
00:47:40,847 --> 00:47:42,888
I would never tell a lie.
657
00:47:42,888 --> 00:47:46,680
I would never try to recreate something that wasn't real.
658
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:50,264
I did a picture once where I did recreate something.
659
00:47:50,264 --> 00:47:52,931
It was the only time I ever did it,
660
00:47:52,931 --> 00:47:57,431
but I saw some Americans looting the body of a dead soldier,
661
00:47:57,431 --> 00:48:01,348
looking for souvenirs and mocking the body, mocking the person.
662
00:48:01,348 --> 00:48:03,223
And when they went away,
663
00:48:03,223 --> 00:48:05,973
having rifled all through his personal things,
664
00:48:05,973 --> 00:48:08,932
I brought them together and made a kind of montage
665
00:48:08,932 --> 00:48:12,849
of this pathetic possessions of this North Vietnamese soldier.
666
00:48:14,057 --> 00:48:16,349
It's the only time I've ever done it,
667
00:48:16,349 --> 00:48:19,807
but I thought I would make a statement for this soldier.
668
00:48:19,807 --> 00:48:21,932
I have no shame about doing that.
669
00:48:23,058 --> 00:48:27,433
I have this picture and I think it says what I was trying to make it say, that, you know,
670
00:48:27,433 --> 00:48:32,933
"Hear me. I am just a victim of war."
671
00:48:32,933 --> 00:48:36,308
I was trying to say this about this young man.
672
00:48:41,184 --> 00:48:44,809
We had total freedom in Vietnam.
673
00:48:44,809 --> 00:48:48,892
That, of course, made the Americans feel,
674
00:48:48,892 --> 00:48:51,643
when the war finally came to an end,
675
00:48:51,643 --> 00:48:54,268
that it was the media that let them down.
676
00:48:54,268 --> 00:48:58,435
They felt a bit upset about that, because they had given us
677
00:48:58,435 --> 00:49:01,977
every facility and all they got in exchange was, you know,
678
00:49:01,977 --> 00:49:06,852
that public opinion turned against the war in Vietnam.
679
00:49:07,977 --> 00:49:13,894
So if you go to Afghanistan now, you are totally controlled.
680
00:49:13,894 --> 00:49:16,894
They are never going to be allowed to take the kind of photographs
681
00:49:16,894 --> 00:49:22,644
I did in Vietnam of the real thing, the battle, the price of war
682
00:49:22,644 --> 00:49:29,812
and the suffering and loss, so the whole rulebook has been rewritten.
683
00:49:29,812 --> 00:49:32,937
And it doesn't come out in our favour.
684
00:49:38,562 --> 00:49:40,646
You just said it's a rotten job
685
00:49:40,646 --> 00:49:43,646
and yet you have, in fact, sought it out.
686
00:49:43,646 --> 00:49:46,896
You've sought out war and famine and misery
687
00:49:46,896 --> 00:49:50,021
in all the time I've known you, which has been a long, long time.
688
00:49:50,021 --> 00:49:52,771
Yes, I did it because I thought it was just going to be soldiers,
689
00:49:52,771 --> 00:49:54,271
and then when I got to war,
690
00:49:54,271 --> 00:49:57,022
I thought it was amazingly exciting to lay under
691
00:49:57,022 --> 00:49:59,980
a barrage of shells dropping on me, or a sniper trying to get me.
692
00:49:59,980 --> 00:50:02,689
I thought, you know, that was a challenge,
693
00:50:02,689 --> 00:50:05,605
and I have swum around with many dead bodies in canals
694
00:50:05,605 --> 00:50:09,189
to get by them when the sniper is working a ridge for me.
695
00:50:09,189 --> 00:50:13,106
I felt I wanted to put my fingers up and say, "You missed it, mate."
696
00:50:13,106 --> 00:50:16,148
And, you know, I had a very cocky attitude about warfare,
697
00:50:16,148 --> 00:50:20,898
but then I started coming in contact with the real victims
698
00:50:20,898 --> 00:50:23,690
and they are always the poor people who are not informed.
699
00:50:23,690 --> 00:50:26,482
They don't have the Mercedes-Benz to get away.
700
00:50:26,482 --> 00:50:29,815
They don't have the communication or the money to move off quick.
701
00:50:29,815 --> 00:50:33,315
They are always the very poorest people who get clobbered.
702
00:50:33,315 --> 00:50:37,149
And the amazing thing is that is where I started in my life,
703
00:50:37,149 --> 00:50:39,274
living with poor people,
704
00:50:39,274 --> 00:50:41,816
and when I am with them in those circumstances,
705
00:50:41,816 --> 00:50:46,233
I have a very close affinity and understanding of what their lot is.
706
00:50:48,400 --> 00:50:52,192
# I presume you never noticed
707
00:50:55,025 --> 00:50:59,484
# How much I really cared... #
708
00:50:59,484 --> 00:51:01,192
You are friends, aren't you?
709
00:51:01,192 --> 00:51:04,859
- You are buddies, aren't you?
- Well, we're all buddies.
710
00:51:08,068 --> 00:51:10,651
Can you look where my elbow is?
711
00:51:10,651 --> 00:51:13,860
I want to see your face, if you don't mind. That's fine.
712
00:51:13,860 --> 00:51:18,401
You're OK, aren't you? You don't mind? You don't mind me?
713
00:51:18,401 --> 00:51:22,193
I'm not bullying you around, am I? OK, thanks.
714
00:51:22,193 --> 00:51:24,652
I don't want to take liberties, you know.
715
00:51:33,986 --> 00:51:36,569
I could have spent the rest of my life working
716
00:51:36,569 --> 00:51:39,861
in Aldgate and Whitechapel, it's all there.
717
00:51:39,861 --> 00:51:42,028
Photographically, it's all there.
718
00:51:43,528 --> 00:51:47,112
It is a totally, what do they call it...
719
00:51:49,945 --> 00:51:54,820
..Hogarthian kind of experience, when you are doing these pictures.
720
00:51:56,570 --> 00:51:58,904
PIANO MUSIC
721
00:52:08,029 --> 00:52:10,738
This is one of my favourite pictures and I've never,
722
00:52:10,738 --> 00:52:12,696
ever printed it before.
723
00:52:12,696 --> 00:52:15,030
Look at these men's hands.
724
00:52:15,030 --> 00:52:17,697
They are all standing up asleep, these men.
725
00:52:30,864 --> 00:52:33,864
These people used to try and put the dead eye on you.
726
00:52:33,864 --> 00:52:36,115
By that, they would try to stare you out.
727
00:52:36,115 --> 00:52:39,698
You must never flinch away like that. You must stare them out.
728
00:52:43,032 --> 00:52:45,282
This is a woman called Jean.
729
00:52:45,282 --> 00:52:49,199
She used to hang out under the arches of Liverpool Street Station.
730
00:52:50,240 --> 00:52:52,324
She used to curtsey when I went up.
731
00:52:52,324 --> 00:52:54,407
She used to say, "Hello, Captain Mark."
732
00:52:54,407 --> 00:52:57,407
I said, "Why do you keep calling me Captain Mark?"
733
00:52:57,407 --> 00:53:00,533
And she said, "Because you look like Captain Mark Phillips."
734
00:53:00,533 --> 00:53:02,658
She said, "Would you like some tea?"
735
00:53:02,658 --> 00:53:04,866
And I said, "You haven't got any milk."
736
00:53:04,866 --> 00:53:08,200
She said, "I can always get it outside of people's front doors."
737
00:53:08,200 --> 00:53:10,658
I loved her.
738
00:53:10,658 --> 00:53:13,575
In fact, what I did, I found her somewhere to live.
739
00:53:16,284 --> 00:53:18,450
This is a picture I really like.
740
00:53:18,450 --> 00:53:21,951
It's like a fallen woman from the turn of the century.
741
00:53:21,951 --> 00:53:26,284
I did this in Chapel Market on Sunday morning when I was very young.
742
00:53:26,284 --> 00:53:29,201
She's been a posh woman, this woman.
743
00:53:29,201 --> 00:53:32,368
You can tell by the handbag, tell by the clothes.
744
00:53:35,868 --> 00:53:40,035
They're all young, now. They are not old people like this.
745
00:53:46,202 --> 00:53:48,577
I think one of the best portraits I ever did
746
00:53:48,577 --> 00:53:51,077
was this man in Spitalfields Market.
747
00:53:51,077 --> 00:53:54,119
He was actually lying by the embers of an all-night fire
748
00:53:54,119 --> 00:53:57,203
that these homeless men used to congregate around.
749
00:53:57,203 --> 00:53:59,578
He sat up and looked at me full-face.
750
00:53:59,578 --> 00:54:03,245
I just held his stare and I just brought my Nikon camera up
751
00:54:03,245 --> 00:54:06,620
to my eye and took this picture and he never moved an eyelid.
752
00:54:06,620 --> 00:54:09,495
I was looking at the bluest eyes you've ever seen
753
00:54:09,495 --> 00:54:11,620
and his hair was matted.
754
00:54:11,620 --> 00:54:15,621
I felt as if I was looking at one of those Neptune images
755
00:54:15,621 --> 00:54:19,621
of a man under the sea, you know, with a trident.
756
00:54:19,621 --> 00:54:21,954
It was quite extraordinary.
757
00:54:23,538 --> 00:54:25,663
So pleased with the picture.
758
00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:33,122
MUSIC: "Blue Peter Theme"
759
00:54:33,122 --> 00:54:36,038
This year it's a matter of life and death.
760
00:54:36,038 --> 00:54:38,164
GUNSHOT
761
00:54:38,164 --> 00:54:41,622
There has been a war going on in West Africa for two years now.
762
00:54:41,622 --> 00:54:45,247
It's a civil war between the Biafrans and the Nigerians.
763
00:54:45,247 --> 00:54:49,998
We're not going to say which side is right or which side is wrong,
764
00:54:49,998 --> 00:54:52,664
except that all war is always wrong.
765
00:55:19,874 --> 00:55:22,000
I went two or three times.
766
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:25,250
Aeroplanes that used to take in aid
767
00:55:25,250 --> 00:55:29,083
used to land on an extended road, which was their airstrip.
768
00:55:29,083 --> 00:55:32,584
It was called Uli Airstrip and you went at night
769
00:55:32,584 --> 00:55:35,042
and the Federal Government had hired,
770
00:55:35,042 --> 00:55:38,209
you know, Russian pilots and foreign pilots
771
00:55:38,209 --> 00:55:40,292
to try and shoot these planes down.
772
00:55:40,292 --> 00:55:42,959
This one is flying the other side of the mission church,
773
00:55:42,959 --> 00:55:44,668
sweeping to the right.
774
00:55:44,668 --> 00:55:46,876
Streaking the ground as they move,
775
00:55:46,876 --> 00:55:49,668
dropping incendiary bombs and fragmentation bombs
776
00:55:49,668 --> 00:55:51,876
in the places around here.
777
00:55:53,501 --> 00:55:59,168
So, going in to Uli Airstrip at night was a very hairy experience.
778
00:55:59,168 --> 00:56:03,585
There are crews out there willing to fly, despite the lack of permission
779
00:56:03,585 --> 00:56:06,752
and we will just try and fly in.
780
00:56:06,752 --> 00:56:10,669
- But you stand a good chance of being shot down?
- I don't think so, no.
781
00:56:11,961 --> 00:56:15,169
They seem to have been fairly trigger-happy in the past, though.
782
00:56:15,169 --> 00:56:18,670
Anyway, we are going to try and let us see.
783
00:56:18,670 --> 00:56:21,420
Ms Ryder, why are you going as well?
784
00:56:22,878 --> 00:56:26,920
Well, because one feels very concerned, clearly,
785
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:30,670
with anyone who is suffering any distress anywhere
786
00:56:30,670 --> 00:56:36,546
and partly because one has seen a situation in Europe,
787
00:56:36,546 --> 00:56:40,588
in the past, perhaps similar to this.
788
00:56:40,588 --> 00:56:43,171
PIANO MUSIC
789
00:57:03,089 --> 00:57:06,464
I walked into a camp which was actually an old school building
790
00:57:06,464 --> 00:57:10,464
and there were 800 dying children, standing there, waiting for me.
791
00:57:13,506 --> 00:57:17,382
You know, when you go into a camp with 800 dying children,
792
00:57:17,382 --> 00:57:21,132
some of whom are actually dropping down and dying in front of me,
793
00:57:21,132 --> 00:57:25,507
they think you're coming with some form of salvation.
794
00:57:25,507 --> 00:57:29,091
They don't realise you're coming to take pictures and get information.
795
00:57:29,091 --> 00:57:33,132
That's not what they want. You know, they want food.
796
00:57:49,092 --> 00:57:52,842
I saw this particular boy that haunts me to this day.
797
00:57:52,842 --> 00:57:55,509
He was an albino boy and he was standing, looking at me.
798
00:57:55,509 --> 00:57:59,009
Barely managing to stand on his spindly legs.
799
00:57:59,009 --> 00:58:01,384
When you're an albino in Africa,
800
00:58:01,384 --> 00:58:04,759
you're singled out all the time for bullying and God knows what.
801
00:58:04,759 --> 00:58:07,885
He was clutching a French corned beef tin,
802
00:58:07,885 --> 00:58:12,385
some previous aid gift which he'd licked the interior completely dry.
803
00:58:12,385 --> 00:58:15,635
And I thought, "I can't look at this boy." It was too much.
804
00:58:15,635 --> 00:58:18,177
He was staring at me, so I went somewhere else
805
00:58:18,177 --> 00:58:22,052
and spoke to a doctor, cos another child had collapsed
806
00:58:22,052 --> 00:58:25,469
and was dying and suddenly, somebody touched my hand
807
00:58:25,469 --> 00:58:29,678
and I looked down and it was the albino boy, he was holding my hand.
808
00:58:29,678 --> 00:58:32,178
And I thought, "Why are you doing this to me?"
809
00:58:32,178 --> 00:58:36,261
It was like he'd honed in on me and he was really paining me,
810
00:58:36,261 --> 00:58:39,011
making me feel so ashamed.
811
00:58:39,011 --> 00:58:42,553
So I gave him a barley sugar from my pocket and he went away
812
00:58:42,553 --> 00:58:46,637
and he stood at a distance, licking this barley sugar.
813
00:58:46,637 --> 00:58:49,845
There were children of two years old,
814
00:58:49,845 --> 00:58:53,637
crawling around on their stomachs with their anus hanging out.
815
00:58:53,637 --> 00:58:57,846
I've never seen anything so terrible in all my life,
816
00:58:57,846 --> 00:59:01,221
the inside of their whole backside
817
00:59:01,221 --> 00:59:05,180
had kind of invertedly kind of suddenly fell out
818
00:59:05,180 --> 00:59:07,888
and they were dragging themselves around
819
00:59:07,888 --> 00:59:10,930
with this inside-out situation of their bottoms,
820
00:59:10,930 --> 00:59:13,805
with flies hanging on as they crawled.
821
00:59:13,805 --> 00:59:17,972
I thought, this was worse than any inferno of insanity
822
00:59:17,972 --> 00:59:20,931
that you could ever experience or see in your life.
823
00:59:20,931 --> 00:59:23,556
It wasn't real, it was so horrible, so shocking.
824
00:59:24,806 --> 00:59:30,681
And, you know, I almost become, well, I almost became paralysed.
825
00:59:30,681 --> 00:59:32,431
I was so shocked.
826
00:59:32,431 --> 00:59:36,307
I thought, "Take your mind off it. Take some pictures."
827
00:59:36,307 --> 00:59:39,723
They said, "There's a girl you must see."
828
00:59:39,723 --> 00:59:42,474
They said, "Her name is Patience."
829
00:59:42,474 --> 00:59:45,474
They brought her in and she was completely naked.
830
00:59:45,474 --> 00:59:47,516
She was 16 years of age,
831
00:59:47,516 --> 00:59:50,974
days, if not one or two days, away from death.
832
00:59:50,974 --> 00:59:53,641
And I thought, "How am I going to do this?"
833
00:59:53,641 --> 00:59:58,308
And they sat her down and I asked the nurse
834
00:59:58,308 --> 01:00:03,350
if she would place her hands over the lower part of her body,
835
01:00:03,350 --> 01:00:05,267
cos I thought, you know,
836
01:00:05,267 --> 01:00:07,100
"If I'm going to do this picture
837
01:00:07,100 --> 01:00:09,267
"to show this terrible, shocking creature,
838
01:00:09,267 --> 01:00:12,809
"I'm going to do it with as much dignity as I can rustle up
839
01:00:12,809 --> 01:00:16,309
"and at least not take advantage of her nakedness."
840
01:00:22,393 --> 01:00:25,435
You've never seen a more dignified person, you know,
841
01:00:25,435 --> 01:00:27,518
you know, inches away from death.
842
01:00:29,060 --> 01:00:31,185
PIANO MUSIC
843
01:00:38,269 --> 01:00:42,936
And I remember one day seeing a woman trying to feed a child at the breast.
844
01:00:42,936 --> 01:00:46,853
There was nothing for the child at the breast.
845
01:00:46,853 --> 01:00:50,478
And I saw some writing at the back, in the far distance.
846
01:00:50,478 --> 01:00:54,811
And after I'd photographed the woman, who, believe it or not,
847
01:00:54,811 --> 01:00:58,187
was only 24 years of age and she looked like 65,
848
01:00:58,187 --> 01:01:01,353
I went and read the writing in the far distance on the wall
849
01:01:01,353 --> 01:01:05,104
and it had on the wall, "Today I am reborn."
850
01:01:09,604 --> 01:01:14,938
And that little inscription took my legs away from me.
851
01:01:14,938 --> 01:01:17,979
You know, you can go through so much as a photographer,
852
01:01:17,979 --> 01:01:20,188
you put yourself there.
853
01:01:20,188 --> 01:01:23,980
You don't ask, you know, you don't ask why you are there.
854
01:01:23,980 --> 01:01:27,230
You go there and the same time you put yourself there.
855
01:01:27,230 --> 01:01:29,230
You could refuse if you want.
856
01:01:29,230 --> 01:01:32,314
I went there, but when I went there, I photographed these people
857
01:01:32,314 --> 01:01:37,272
to show they had more dignity than most of us will ever dream of,
858
01:01:37,272 --> 01:01:39,856
that being in the last throes of their life.
859
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:55,815
His awareness of the futility of it,
860
01:01:55,815 --> 01:02:03,107
as well as the direct sight of these people dying on their feet...
861
01:02:05,482 --> 01:02:07,649
..moved him enormously.
862
01:02:07,649 --> 01:02:09,441
He always had empathy, of course,
863
01:02:09,441 --> 01:02:13,691
with the soldier who was shot, but here he was looking at civilians.
864
01:02:13,691 --> 01:02:17,483
Men and women without any clue about what was going on,
865
01:02:17,483 --> 01:02:19,983
dying because of the ambitions
866
01:02:19,983 --> 01:02:23,400
of some of the power-hungry people in the country.
867
01:02:25,359 --> 01:02:29,734
MUSIC: "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd
868
01:02:44,318 --> 01:02:49,735
# If I leave here tomorrow
869
01:02:52,235 --> 01:02:55,152
# Would you still remember me?
870
01:02:59,527 --> 01:03:06,028
# I must be travelling on now... #
871
01:03:07,194 --> 01:03:11,320
I spent my whole life travelling the world. I was really on the move.
872
01:03:18,778 --> 01:03:21,279
You know, I was constantly at London Airport
873
01:03:21,279 --> 01:03:24,570
and waving goodbye to my little family.
874
01:03:25,862 --> 01:03:28,779
# And this bird shall never change... #
875
01:03:36,738 --> 01:03:39,071
I was very eager, as always,
876
01:03:39,071 --> 01:03:42,447
and ambitious to get to the front of the fighting.
877
01:03:42,447 --> 01:03:44,238
And the next thing I know,
878
01:03:44,238 --> 01:03:46,947
we walked into an ambush and all hell broke loose.
879
01:03:46,947 --> 01:03:49,072
GUNFIRE
880
01:03:49,072 --> 01:03:53,822
There was tremendous, heavy AK-47 fire.
881
01:03:53,822 --> 01:03:56,614
And I immediately ran down into the side of the road,
882
01:03:56,614 --> 01:03:58,739
which is like a culvert.
883
01:04:02,906 --> 01:04:06,031
And I thought, "I'm going to get my tail out of here."
884
01:04:06,031 --> 01:04:09,198
Because, you know, what does one picture mean of a soldier under fire
885
01:04:09,198 --> 01:04:11,115
if it's going to cost you your life?
886
01:04:11,115 --> 01:04:14,240
For the first time, my nerve went.
887
01:04:14,240 --> 01:04:17,032
I knelt behind a tube and there was an almighty explosion.
888
01:04:17,032 --> 01:04:19,240
I was blown across the road.
889
01:04:19,240 --> 01:04:21,741
I felt this terrible burning sensation in my legs
890
01:04:21,741 --> 01:04:23,866
and everywhere from the waist downwards.
891
01:04:23,866 --> 01:04:27,824
And all my past seemed to come before me and I thought, "This is it. I'm going to die."
892
01:04:27,824 --> 01:04:30,949
So I crawled away for about 200 yards,
893
01:04:30,949 --> 01:04:33,241
only to be put on the back of a truck,
894
01:04:33,241 --> 01:04:35,908
having been stabbed with a morphine injection.
895
01:04:35,908 --> 01:04:37,867
And then they filled the lorry up
896
01:04:37,867 --> 01:04:40,908
with about half a dozen soldiers who were wounded.
897
01:04:40,908 --> 01:04:43,825
I thought, "I'm going to take my mind off my own pain
898
01:04:43,825 --> 01:04:47,284
"and I'm going to photograph what's going on in this truck."
899
01:04:48,326 --> 01:04:50,867
They put the man on the truck right next to me
900
01:04:50,867 --> 01:04:53,784
who took the full brunt of the mortar bomb that hit me,
901
01:04:53,784 --> 01:04:57,743
but he got, unfortunately, all of it in his chest and stomach.
902
01:04:57,743 --> 01:05:01,201
And he kept sitting up and trying to fight people holding him down.
903
01:05:01,201 --> 01:05:03,326
He was fighting.
904
01:05:03,326 --> 01:05:06,493
And he died on the way back in the truck to the hospital,
905
01:05:06,493 --> 01:05:09,160
because I sat up and photographed him.
906
01:05:09,160 --> 01:05:13,244
And I said, "I don't want you to take any more risks."
907
01:05:13,244 --> 01:05:16,202
They took the risks as they judged fit
908
01:05:16,202 --> 01:05:18,911
because they were independently-minded.
909
01:05:18,911 --> 01:05:22,786
And I secretly rejoiced that they brought back what they did,
910
01:05:22,786 --> 01:05:26,078
but nonetheless, the next time and the next time
911
01:05:26,078 --> 01:05:28,203
and the next time, you thought,
912
01:05:28,203 --> 01:05:33,412
"Pray to God that they are not playing Russian roulette with their own lives."
913
01:05:40,912 --> 01:05:43,037
LOUD EXPLOSION
914
01:05:47,787 --> 01:05:51,579
It was strange for me to get on an aeroplane and fly to Belfast,
915
01:05:51,579 --> 01:05:55,163
drive to Londonderry, check into the hotel.
916
01:05:56,413 --> 01:05:58,955
And you could guarantee that once the pubs turned out
917
01:05:58,955 --> 01:06:01,080
at about 3-something in the afternoon,
918
01:06:01,080 --> 01:06:02,788
that there you braced yourself
919
01:06:02,788 --> 01:06:05,247
and you knew exactly where it would be.
920
01:06:05,247 --> 01:06:09,039
It was almost like a football match. You knew where the action would be.
921
01:06:09,039 --> 01:06:11,164
SHOUTING AND SCREAMING
922
01:06:11,164 --> 01:06:14,539
It was bricks and bottles and stones
923
01:06:14,539 --> 01:06:17,706
coming at the soldiers, who then fired rubber bullets
924
01:06:17,706 --> 01:06:22,790
and CS gas back, and I used to be gassed on a regular basis.
925
01:06:22,790 --> 01:06:25,915
But from a photographer's point of view, you couldn't miss.
926
01:06:35,874 --> 01:06:39,499
It was like a theatre, really. It was like a play.
927
01:06:39,499 --> 01:06:43,791
You knew the plot, you'd seen it many times before.
928
01:07:05,959 --> 01:07:09,334
This particular day, I knew they were going to charge
929
01:07:09,334 --> 01:07:12,751
and I was standing there with my short telephoto lens
930
01:07:12,751 --> 01:07:16,209
and I took this picture of the "let's go and get them".
931
01:07:18,001 --> 01:07:22,418
I wasn't totally aware that in the shop doorway by this taxi company
932
01:07:22,418 --> 01:07:26,668
was a woman standing there, holding her mouth with total shock.
933
01:07:28,502 --> 01:07:31,210
That made my picture much more poignant, really.
934
01:08:00,671 --> 01:08:02,504
I came upon this highway
935
01:08:02,504 --> 01:08:06,754
and saw these dying soldiers in the road, and I was with a very
936
01:08:06,754 --> 01:08:11,338
nice friend of mine called Michael Nicholson, who was an ITV reporter.
937
01:08:11,338 --> 01:08:15,338
Their wounds were kind of melting into the tar itself on the road.
938
01:08:15,338 --> 01:08:17,672
So hot.
939
01:08:17,672 --> 01:08:20,213
We prised them off the road and we draped them
940
01:08:20,213 --> 01:08:23,297
across the bonnet of his Jeep.
941
01:08:23,297 --> 01:08:26,172
And I stood on the front of it and kind of leaned on them
942
01:08:26,172 --> 01:08:30,589
and we drove them back to a first aid medical centre for the army.
943
01:08:30,589 --> 01:08:35,298
And we went back the next morning to see how they were, but they had died.
944
01:08:43,715 --> 01:08:48,048
And I did lots of pictures of men coming in on that road
945
01:08:48,048 --> 01:08:50,132
with pieces of cardboard around their feet,
946
01:08:50,132 --> 01:08:52,590
because they threw their boots away
947
01:08:52,590 --> 01:08:55,299
and, of course, they didn't last long on that road.
948
01:08:57,841 --> 01:09:01,258
The whole thing was the most appalling shambles.
949
01:09:01,258 --> 01:09:04,383
It was like the retreat from Moscow. Terrible disarray.
950
01:09:06,925 --> 01:09:10,466
And so, when the Sunday Times published these pictures,
951
01:09:10,466 --> 01:09:14,175
the South Vietnamese Government put me on a blacklist,
952
01:09:14,175 --> 01:09:17,092
which I never thought for one minute existed.
953
01:09:20,634 --> 01:09:24,009
I was building this reputation as a war photographer,
954
01:09:24,009 --> 01:09:26,301
which today I really detest.
955
01:09:26,301 --> 01:09:28,217
I worked for it and then,
956
01:09:28,217 --> 01:09:32,801
when I suddenly felt that I was being acclaimed as a war photographer,
957
01:09:32,801 --> 01:09:35,093
suddenly I felt uncomfortable and dirty.
958
01:09:35,093 --> 01:09:37,385
I felt being called a war photographer
959
01:09:37,385 --> 01:09:39,510
was like being called a mercenary.
960
01:09:51,052 --> 01:09:55,261
Looking back on all that, I thought my family suffered very badly.
961
01:09:55,261 --> 01:09:58,803
I was always waving goodbye to them and one wonders in their mind,
962
01:09:58,803 --> 01:10:02,095
were they ever thinking, "Will we ever see this strange man again,
963
01:10:02,095 --> 01:10:04,386
"who is supposed to be our father?"
964
01:10:07,053 --> 01:10:10,220
But, you know, I didn't want to weaken my strength
965
01:10:10,220 --> 01:10:12,804
by thinking in a sentimental way.
966
01:10:12,804 --> 01:10:16,720
I wanted to do my job and then hopefully go home to them,
967
01:10:16,720 --> 01:10:20,054
but it was very selfish, now I look back on it.
968
01:10:20,054 --> 01:10:22,721
And it eventually ruined by marriage.
969
01:10:54,598 --> 01:10:56,723
GUNFIRE
970
01:10:59,306 --> 01:11:01,556
In Beirut's Christian stronghold,
971
01:11:01,556 --> 01:11:06,723
Phalangist militiamen poured fire on neighbouring areas
972
01:11:06,723 --> 01:11:08,890
held by Muslim leftists
973
01:11:08,890 --> 01:11:12,807
and allies from the more extreme Palestinian guerrilla group.
974
01:11:12,807 --> 01:11:15,224
Every day you had a twist in the Lebanon.
975
01:11:15,224 --> 01:11:20,266
There is always something ghastly and new to kind of look at.
976
01:11:20,266 --> 01:11:24,016
I did this photograph of all these Christians,
977
01:11:24,016 --> 01:11:27,433
all proudly showing their manly side to them.
978
01:11:28,475 --> 01:11:32,725
And the audacity was that they were wearing Christian crosses
979
01:11:32,725 --> 01:11:35,475
and, you know, you think...
980
01:11:35,475 --> 01:11:39,100
you expect more from Christianity
981
01:11:39,100 --> 01:11:42,517
if you're displaying it in such a way than some of the terrible things
982
01:11:42,517 --> 01:11:45,767
that they did in the name of Christianity.
983
01:11:45,767 --> 01:11:49,601
On the political front, the situation still appears to be stalemate.
984
01:11:49,601 --> 01:11:52,685
Efforts to implement a ceasefire clearly having failed
985
01:11:52,685 --> 01:11:56,143
and parliament's attempts to hold a session...
986
01:11:56,143 --> 01:12:00,560
The Palestinian areas, the kind of east side of Beirut,
987
01:12:00,560 --> 01:12:04,019
right inside the Christian heartland.
988
01:12:05,519 --> 01:12:11,311
And it was just, it was murder from the word go.
989
01:12:11,311 --> 01:12:13,394
MUSIC
990
01:12:18,103 --> 01:12:21,645
They started, you know, collecting prisoners.
991
01:12:21,645 --> 01:12:23,686
It all happened so quickly.
992
01:12:25,603 --> 01:12:29,353
I went to a house where I could hear a lot of women and children screaming.
993
01:12:29,353 --> 01:12:31,812
A Christian was bringing the women and children down
994
01:12:31,812 --> 01:12:36,646
the side of this stairwell and I could see two Palestinian young men
995
01:12:36,646 --> 01:12:41,229
with their hands up, in the left-hand side of the stairwell.
996
01:12:43,396 --> 01:12:47,105
The moment the women went out of the house,
997
01:12:47,105 --> 01:12:50,771
the man next to me, and I was very close, you know,
998
01:12:50,771 --> 01:12:54,855
very close, started opening up and killing these people in cold blood, immediately.
999
01:12:54,855 --> 01:12:58,480
And they went down in a hail of bullets and blood, all up the wall.
1000
01:13:00,314 --> 01:13:04,106
And I went round the back of the stairwell, another stairwell,
1001
01:13:04,106 --> 01:13:07,314
and try to get a grip of myself, cos I was so shocked.
1002
01:13:07,314 --> 01:13:09,398
I couldn't believe what I had just seen.
1003
01:13:10,439 --> 01:13:12,314
I came out of the building
1004
01:13:12,314 --> 01:13:15,690
and there was another Christian gunman who had the women and children
1005
01:13:15,690 --> 01:13:18,398
and he said, "By the way, if I see you taking any pictures,
1006
01:13:18,398 --> 01:13:21,357
"I am going to kill you myself. Get out of here."
1007
01:13:24,523 --> 01:13:26,524
Everywhere I went that day,
1008
01:13:26,524 --> 01:13:30,190
I could see another person being murdered in front of me.
1009
01:13:30,190 --> 01:13:34,066
Of course, what I did eventually was get the picture of the man
1010
01:13:34,066 --> 01:13:37,441
playing the lute over the dead Palestinian girl's body.
1011
01:13:41,566 --> 01:13:45,483
They were so angry about it when it was published that they said
1012
01:13:45,483 --> 01:13:49,567
if they ever caught the man who took the picture, they would kill him.
1013
01:13:54,609 --> 01:13:56,609
In a way, it was almost an honour
1014
01:13:56,609 --> 01:13:59,401
that they wanted to kill me for taking the picture.
1015
01:14:03,818 --> 01:14:06,609
The 26-storey Holiday Inn is burning.
1016
01:14:06,609 --> 01:14:09,651
The third of a trio of five-star hotels
1017
01:14:09,651 --> 01:14:11,651
to be caught in the firing line.
1018
01:14:11,651 --> 01:14:14,110
This is the courtyard of the Hilton Hotel
1019
01:14:14,110 --> 01:14:17,985
and it was here that the fighting took place all last night.
1020
01:14:17,985 --> 01:14:25,069
When the Islamics overwhelmed part of the Christian area where I was,
1021
01:14:25,069 --> 01:14:29,902
they were actually ensconced in the Hilton Hotel and when they got in,
1022
01:14:29,902 --> 01:14:32,153
the Christians that they'd captured in there,
1023
01:14:32,153 --> 01:14:35,486
they took them to the top floor and they mutilated them
1024
01:14:35,486 --> 01:14:40,528
in a manly sense, by cutting off part of them, and they threw them,
1025
01:14:40,528 --> 01:14:43,028
alive, off the top of the building.
1026
01:14:44,820 --> 01:14:47,862
When it gets down to that kind of hatred,
1027
01:14:47,862 --> 01:14:50,654
it becomes a form of insanity.
1028
01:14:50,654 --> 01:14:56,029
It goes beyond your understanding of anything. Anything.
1029
01:15:04,571 --> 01:15:08,488
I don't know how he did it. He had a very sensitive conscience.
1030
01:15:08,488 --> 01:15:11,947
I would often call him "the conscience with a camera".
1031
01:15:11,947 --> 01:15:16,655
He had a very sensitive feel for other people's suffering,
1032
01:15:16,655 --> 01:15:20,906
which also gave him the impetus to feel,
1033
01:15:20,906 --> 01:15:25,031
"I can make people wake up to what is really going on here".
1034
01:15:25,031 --> 01:15:28,364
So the sensitivity which might have made him
1035
01:15:28,364 --> 01:15:33,740
recoil from the images was allied to this conscience of his which says,
1036
01:15:33,740 --> 01:15:38,073
"I've got to get this story. It can only be told by photographs."
1037
01:15:38,073 --> 01:15:44,157
His journalism, which is best when that cold eye of his,
1038
01:15:44,157 --> 01:15:49,366
if you like, was informed by the warmth of his empathy,
1039
01:15:49,366 --> 01:15:54,366
and by the text, which amplified the image which you could see.
1040
01:15:54,366 --> 01:15:58,283
It's an awful question to ask you, but do you think the images you take
1041
01:15:58,283 --> 01:16:02,408
of horror, of war, actually make anybody change their mind about it?
1042
01:16:02,408 --> 01:16:04,825
Actually, to be honest, I don't think they have.
1043
01:16:04,825 --> 01:16:07,117
I've been photographing war for about 16 years
1044
01:16:07,117 --> 01:16:09,450
and I've got very disillusioned.
1045
01:16:09,450 --> 01:16:12,117
And I've just had an exhibition
1046
01:16:12,117 --> 01:16:15,700
and the exhibition was mostly attended by very young people
1047
01:16:15,700 --> 01:16:19,076
and judging by the letters that I have received, which were many,
1048
01:16:19,076 --> 01:16:21,993
the people who wrote to me were very young people
1049
01:16:21,993 --> 01:16:24,284
and they are the people who care about war.
1050
01:16:24,284 --> 01:16:26,326
I think the rest of us, the middle-aged,
1051
01:16:26,326 --> 01:16:30,785
I hate to say this, people, they've had war and they've had enough of it.
1052
01:16:30,785 --> 01:16:33,743
I think they are sick about hearing about it now.
1053
01:16:33,743 --> 01:16:36,243
They think there is no solution, but the young people,
1054
01:16:36,243 --> 01:16:38,285
who are tomorrow's people,
1055
01:16:38,285 --> 01:16:41,410
they are more interested about trying to do something about it.
1056
01:16:41,410 --> 01:16:44,244
They feel ashamed of it and can't understand it.
1057
01:16:44,244 --> 01:16:47,452
I mean, why don't you settle for the easy life and earn 500 quid
1058
01:16:47,452 --> 01:16:50,411
a day taking pictures of ladies wearing bras and things?
1059
01:16:50,411 --> 01:16:54,703
- Or not wearing bras?
- I would probably get a heart attack.
1060
01:16:54,703 --> 01:16:56,828
LAUGHTER
1061
01:16:58,078 --> 01:17:00,703
Did you like this one? The sulky lover?
1062
01:17:01,912 --> 01:17:04,453
You would be if you had a face like that against you.
1063
01:17:04,453 --> 01:17:06,537
THEY LAUGH
1064
01:17:09,204 --> 01:17:13,371
This is one of my favourite pictures. I don't have many favourites.
1065
01:17:13,371 --> 01:17:16,621
It's a classic example of intrusion, of course,
1066
01:17:16,621 --> 01:17:20,538
but it's just showing the English.
1067
01:17:20,538 --> 01:17:22,913
The deckchairs says it all, doesn't it?
1068
01:17:22,913 --> 01:17:26,038
One thing about England, you can guarantee to find
1069
01:17:26,038 --> 01:17:29,288
all kinds of kind of crazy people in the summer.
1070
01:17:31,663 --> 01:17:35,205
There's not, I don't think there is a country quite like this country
1071
01:17:35,205 --> 01:17:38,414
for the diversities of people's manifestations.
1072
01:17:38,414 --> 01:17:40,372
You know, eccentrics.
1073
01:17:40,372 --> 01:17:43,331
You can get them by the bus-load here in England. I love it.
1074
01:17:43,331 --> 01:17:45,414
MUSIC: "This Is England" by The Clash
1075
01:17:45,414 --> 01:17:49,665
# I hear a gang fire on a human factory farm
1076
01:17:49,665 --> 01:17:53,248
# Are they howling out or doing somebody harm?
1077
01:17:56,415 --> 01:18:00,915
# On a catwalk jungle somebody grabbed my arm
1078
01:18:03,249 --> 01:18:07,291
# A voice spoke so cold, it matched the weapon in her palm
1079
01:18:09,957 --> 01:18:12,666
# This is England
1080
01:18:12,666 --> 01:18:15,458
# This knife of Sheffield steel
1081
01:18:15,458 --> 01:18:18,416
# This is England
1082
01:18:18,416 --> 01:18:21,583
# This is how we feel
1083
01:18:37,709 --> 01:18:42,251
# This is England... #
1084
01:19:04,377 --> 01:19:07,294
When the print unions sabotaged the Sunday Times,
1085
01:19:07,294 --> 01:19:09,628
they basically killed the paper.
1086
01:19:09,628 --> 01:19:12,920
The Thomson Organisation said, "We can't go on like this.
1087
01:19:12,920 --> 01:19:17,878
"We can't have the paper wrecked not only physically but economically."
1088
01:19:17,878 --> 01:19:20,420
So they put the paper up for sale.
1089
01:19:22,670 --> 01:19:25,337
And they had a perception, a judgement,
1090
01:19:25,337 --> 01:19:29,879
that Rupert Murdoch, with his history of being pretty tough,
1091
01:19:29,879 --> 01:19:33,212
would be better able to control the print unions.
1092
01:19:34,671 --> 01:19:38,129
And in some respects, that was a fair judgement.
1093
01:19:38,129 --> 01:19:40,588
You've had enough photographs. I think we really...
1094
01:19:40,588 --> 01:19:43,046
- And with Mr Evans.
- Mr Evans.
1095
01:19:43,046 --> 01:19:48,463
And though he made promises about the papers would maintain
1096
01:19:48,463 --> 01:19:51,464
their independence, he did not keep them.
1097
01:19:51,464 --> 01:19:57,381
And this, of course, was very, very bad news for British journalism
1098
01:19:57,381 --> 01:20:01,756
but it was also bad news, individually, for Don McCullin.
1099
01:20:01,756 --> 01:20:03,923
When Murdoch took over the Sunday Times
1100
01:20:03,923 --> 01:20:06,631
and Harold Evans went over to the Times newspaper,
1101
01:20:06,631 --> 01:20:11,298
we all felt that, you know, we were looking at the beginning of the end.
1102
01:20:11,298 --> 01:20:15,507
And I had had 18 fantastic years there.
1103
01:20:15,507 --> 01:20:20,549
The precious independence that he'd had and the ability to go
1104
01:20:20,549 --> 01:20:24,466
and tell an unvarnished truth through the medium of film
1105
01:20:24,466 --> 01:20:28,341
was now at risk, and so it proved to be.
1106
01:20:35,216 --> 01:20:37,800
MUSIC
1107
01:20:53,009 --> 01:20:56,176
The Falklands War suddenly appeared on the horizon and I thought,
1108
01:20:56,176 --> 01:21:01,343
"I want to be in on this, because for the first time in my life,
1109
01:21:01,343 --> 01:21:05,135
"I'm going to be in a big, international war with British soldiers."
1110
01:21:05,135 --> 01:21:07,885
You know, I thought I was the natural person
1111
01:21:07,885 --> 01:21:10,468
and to my astonishment, I was barred.
1112
01:21:10,468 --> 01:21:13,177
It didn't happen.
1113
01:21:13,177 --> 01:21:18,552
I was left behind and I was utterly miserable and devastated.
1114
01:21:20,886 --> 01:21:24,594
It was an appalling decision to keep Don McCullin off the boat,
1115
01:21:24,594 --> 01:21:27,553
creating the excuse that boat was full.
1116
01:21:29,886 --> 01:21:34,386
It seemed to be saying, "Your photography is so honest,
1117
01:21:34,386 --> 01:21:38,845
"so searing, so implicit with meaning, we can't take the risk
1118
01:21:38,845 --> 01:21:42,845
"of you accessing freedom of expression."
1119
01:21:42,845 --> 01:21:45,470
I thought it was the most appalling decision
1120
01:21:45,470 --> 01:21:48,387
and its effect on him was to seem to say,
1121
01:21:48,387 --> 01:21:52,179
"You've spent your life documenting things
1122
01:21:52,179 --> 01:21:55,096
"we don't think you should ever have documented,"
1123
01:21:55,096 --> 01:22:00,013
which, of course, was saying, "Why have you bothered?
1124
01:22:00,013 --> 01:22:04,097
"Why have you bothered to risk your life to try and tell the truth?"
1125
01:22:08,222 --> 01:22:11,889
That's the reason I went back to Lebanon,
1126
01:22:11,889 --> 01:22:14,056
because I didn't go to the Falklands.
1127
01:22:14,056 --> 01:22:16,972
The Lebanon War was erupting at the same time.
1128
01:22:16,972 --> 01:22:19,598
Cos, you know, I can always go somewhere else.
1129
01:22:19,598 --> 01:22:22,473
If I couldn't go to this war, I could go to another war, you know.
1130
01:22:22,473 --> 01:22:27,431
Cos I was suffering from what you become, a war junkie, really.
1131
01:22:27,431 --> 01:22:29,931
I was suffering from that problem, you know.
1132
01:22:29,931 --> 01:22:35,599
The massacres were carried out by an elite special security formation
1133
01:22:35,599 --> 01:22:38,724
of the Lebanese Christian Phalange.
1134
01:22:38,724 --> 01:22:41,474
The operation was, at all stages,
1135
01:22:41,474 --> 01:22:45,557
under direct control of senior Phalange commanders.
1136
01:22:45,557 --> 01:22:48,433
During that early stage of the massacre at Shatila Camp,
1137
01:22:48,433 --> 01:22:54,183
the Israeli forces fired a constant barrage of flares
1138
01:22:54,183 --> 01:22:57,266
to light up the camp for the Phalange forces.
1139
01:22:58,558 --> 01:23:00,683
CLASSICAL MUSIC
1140
01:24:00,062 --> 01:24:02,520
One morning in the hotel, very early,
1141
01:24:02,520 --> 01:24:06,771
I had a call from someone saying, "Are you Mr McCullin?" I said yes.
1142
01:24:06,771 --> 01:24:09,979
They said, "Will you come down to the lobby?
1143
01:24:09,979 --> 01:24:13,771
"We want to take you to the hospital at Sabra and Shatila."
1144
01:24:15,521 --> 01:24:18,688
They said, "About 21 people have been killed in this hospital,
1145
01:24:18,688 --> 01:24:20,522
"but we are not interested in that.
1146
01:24:20,522 --> 01:24:25,063
"We want to show you the worst aspect of what has happened here today."
1147
01:24:25,063 --> 01:24:28,314
They took me upstairs to the children's department
1148
01:24:28,314 --> 01:24:31,731
of the insane side of the hospital
1149
01:24:31,731 --> 01:24:34,897
and to my astonishment, there was one nurse who had stayed
1150
01:24:34,897 --> 01:24:38,523
for five days during this shelling and the others had fled the hospital.
1151
01:24:43,815 --> 01:24:46,565
And she showed me around and I couldn't believe
1152
01:24:46,565 --> 01:24:48,565
what I was looking at.
1153
01:24:48,565 --> 01:24:51,815
She said, "We've had to tie the children to the beds,"
1154
01:24:51,815 --> 01:24:54,690
she said, "because we couldn't cope.
1155
01:24:54,690 --> 01:24:57,190
"They would have got away and been injured."
1156
01:24:57,190 --> 01:24:59,732
And there were children tied to the beds,
1157
01:24:59,732 --> 01:25:03,066
covered in flies, in a heat you wouldn't understand.
1158
01:25:04,233 --> 01:25:07,858
So these children were lying in buckets of their own filth,
1159
01:25:07,858 --> 01:25:10,358
starving hungry, dying of thirst.
1160
01:25:11,900 --> 01:25:14,025
MUSIC
1161
01:25:26,359 --> 01:25:29,567
And she said, "There is a room with more children.
1162
01:25:29,567 --> 01:25:33,984
"I've had to lock them in the room and they are blind and insane,"
1163
01:25:33,984 --> 01:25:37,526
and she said, "They're only two years old, some of them."
1164
01:25:37,526 --> 01:25:39,776
And she opened the door of this room
1165
01:25:39,776 --> 01:25:44,027
and the heat that came out of it, you could've roasted a chicken in it.
1166
01:25:44,027 --> 01:25:47,860
And out swam, in their own filth and mess,
1167
01:25:47,860 --> 01:25:50,985
they were like blind rats, these children.
1168
01:25:53,235 --> 01:25:56,944
I don't think I was ever more ashamed of humanity.
1169
01:25:56,944 --> 01:26:02,361
I thought, "If this is what people can do in the name of, you know,
1170
01:26:02,361 --> 01:26:05,570
"Christianity or whatever, you know..."
1171
01:26:05,570 --> 01:26:08,528
Because the war was being conducted against the Christians,
1172
01:26:08,528 --> 01:26:13,320
or the Christians were fighting back and the Jews were shelling,
1173
01:26:13,320 --> 01:26:17,445
I mean, the whole thing was about religious madness.
1174
01:26:17,445 --> 01:26:19,779
Who was paying the price?
1175
01:26:19,779 --> 01:26:25,196
I wandered away. I was in deep shock and I thought, "I'm confused, here.
1176
01:26:25,196 --> 01:26:32,071
"Why am I here? What has this got to do with my original concept of being a photographer?"
1177
01:26:35,530 --> 01:26:38,530
And I wandered into another room just to get away
1178
01:26:38,530 --> 01:26:41,405
from all this horrible, horrible stuff.
1179
01:26:41,405 --> 01:26:43,947
And I saw a child sitting,
1180
01:26:43,947 --> 01:26:48,280
playing with bits of debris as if he had Lego.
1181
01:26:52,947 --> 01:26:55,781
I think it was a day of reckoning for me,
1182
01:26:55,781 --> 01:26:59,614
because I don't think I could have ever touched on more tragedy,
1183
01:26:59,614 --> 01:27:02,823
all under one roof, than what I saw at that hospital that day.
1184
01:27:02,823 --> 01:27:04,990
I've never forgotten it.
1185
01:27:11,365 --> 01:27:15,199
The sad thing about these days that I never forget
1186
01:27:15,199 --> 01:27:18,616
is that they come back, on a regular basis,
1187
01:27:18,616 --> 01:27:22,574
as fresh as it was happening today, to haunt me.
1188
01:27:33,283 --> 01:27:36,492
There is nothing so powerful as reporting.
1189
01:27:36,492 --> 01:27:40,909
The government can't find out the things that reporters can.
1190
01:27:40,909 --> 01:27:43,867
Certainly, many governments wish to suppress
1191
01:27:43,867 --> 01:27:48,576
what can be found out, foreign governments and sometimes our own.
1192
01:27:48,576 --> 01:27:50,784
So this is a very,
1193
01:27:50,784 --> 01:27:54,868
very important quality of Don's impulses,
1194
01:27:54,868 --> 01:27:58,368
which is the passion to report what is happening
1195
01:27:58,368 --> 01:28:01,702
and insofar as that has diminished today,
1196
01:28:01,702 --> 01:28:03,535
we've lost a huge amount
1197
01:28:03,535 --> 01:28:06,494
and I think there is still a tremendous appetite
1198
01:28:06,494 --> 01:28:10,327
for really good photojournalism, really good reporting.
1199
01:28:11,369 --> 01:28:13,869
Mr Rupert Murdoch, on budget day,
1200
01:28:13,869 --> 01:28:18,661
asked me to resign as Editor of the Times. I refused.
1201
01:28:19,703 --> 01:28:21,911
At no time have the independent
1202
01:28:21,911 --> 01:28:25,078
national directors sought my resignation.
1203
01:28:27,453 --> 01:28:30,703
But in the circumstances, the differences between me
1204
01:28:30,703 --> 01:28:33,203
and Mr Murdoch should not be prolonged.
1205
01:28:34,579 --> 01:28:38,871
I am therefore resigning tonight as the Editor of the Times.
1206
01:28:38,871 --> 01:28:43,037
The reason I got pushed out of the Sunday Times was simple, actually.
1207
01:28:43,037 --> 01:28:44,871
They had brought a new editor in.
1208
01:28:44,871 --> 01:28:47,413
A man called Andrew Neil, who was very ambitious,
1209
01:28:47,413 --> 01:28:50,580
and quite, you know, he knew what he wanted.
1210
01:28:50,580 --> 01:28:55,163
Most new editors like to kick off with a new bunch of people
1211
01:28:55,163 --> 01:28:59,247
under them, but he did say that there would be no more
1212
01:28:59,247 --> 01:29:02,539
wars in the magazine and in fact, it would be a magazine
1213
01:29:02,539 --> 01:29:07,331
based on life and leisure, you know, to attract the ads.
1214
01:29:07,331 --> 01:29:11,497
So I was one of the first casualties,
1215
01:29:11,497 --> 01:29:14,956
because when I went and photographed wars and Africa
1216
01:29:14,956 --> 01:29:17,081
and dying and starving children,
1217
01:29:17,081 --> 01:29:21,665
I was going to make sure that I got the strongest images.
1218
01:29:21,665 --> 01:29:24,415
They didn't always sit well in a magazine
1219
01:29:24,415 --> 01:29:28,457
that was trying to sell you, you know, cars and luxury.
1220
01:29:28,457 --> 01:29:31,832
So I was definitely on the way out by that stage.
1221
01:30:01,334 --> 01:30:03,876
I asked him about the occasion he was invited to
1222
01:30:03,876 --> 01:30:07,793
an execution in Saigon and as I recall,
1223
01:30:07,793 --> 01:30:10,876
he went to the prison where the execution was going to take place
1224
01:30:10,876 --> 01:30:14,668
and turned back and refused to take the photograph.
1225
01:30:14,668 --> 01:30:18,877
It was because of his really powerful humanitarian impulses,
1226
01:30:18,877 --> 01:30:23,210
he didn't want to legitimise murder in any way.
1227
01:30:23,210 --> 01:30:27,585
Since, actually, his entire canon of photography
1228
01:30:27,585 --> 01:30:31,086
is to delegitimise violence and say,
1229
01:30:31,086 --> 01:30:34,919
"Look, these are the consequences of your political decision.
1230
01:30:34,919 --> 01:30:37,669
"These are the consequences of your greed.
1231
01:30:37,669 --> 01:30:40,711
"These are the consequences of your carelessness.
1232
01:30:40,711 --> 01:30:42,836
"Look on these and think again."
1233
01:30:42,836 --> 01:30:48,003
I think his entire impulse, a humanitarian photographer
1234
01:30:48,003 --> 01:30:53,504
with tremendous technical skill, amounting to genius, in my view.
1235
01:30:55,254 --> 01:30:57,504
MUSIC
1236
01:31:00,879 --> 01:31:03,129
I'm nearly 75 years of age now.
1237
01:31:03,129 --> 01:31:06,796
I still have some energy left, not a lot,
1238
01:31:06,796 --> 01:31:11,880
but I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to eradicate,
1239
01:31:11,880 --> 01:31:14,255
you know, the things we've been talking about.
1240
01:31:14,255 --> 01:31:17,047
I'm just going to photograph the landscape,
1241
01:31:17,047 --> 01:31:20,714
and the English landscape, to me, is my heaven.
1242
01:31:20,714 --> 01:31:22,839
My form of heaven.
1243
01:31:25,214 --> 01:31:28,839
The one thing that upsets me about it is, like all other things,
1244
01:31:28,839 --> 01:31:32,256
there is always a threat surrounding the things you love.
1245
01:31:32,256 --> 01:31:35,840
When I hear a chainsaw in the distance, you know,
1246
01:31:35,840 --> 01:31:37,923
I think a tree is dying.
1247
01:31:37,923 --> 01:31:41,007
When I hear shooting, when there is pheasant shooting,
1248
01:31:41,007 --> 01:31:43,840
I think there's going to be some blood somewhere.
1249
01:31:43,840 --> 01:31:46,507
The sound of gunfire immediately switches on
1250
01:31:46,507 --> 01:31:50,174
another part of my nervous system.
1251
01:31:53,924 --> 01:31:58,424
So I feel, as much as you try to run away from these things,
1252
01:31:58,424 --> 01:32:01,674
someone always presses a button and says, you know,
1253
01:32:01,674 --> 01:32:05,966
"Here is a reminder of, you know, what you used to do."
1254
01:34:57,018 --> 01:34:59,144
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