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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:03,960 Tonight's Imagine presents an intimate portrait 2 00:00:03,960 --> 00:00:06,320 of the great British war photographer and photojournalist 3 00:00:06,320 --> 00:00:08,200 Don McCullin. 4 00:00:08,200 --> 00:00:11,400 In his early 20s, and with no formal training, 5 00:00:11,400 --> 00:00:14,640 McCullin began his career here in Finsbury Park, 6 00:00:14,640 --> 00:00:20,240 photographing the violent teenage gangs ruling the roost in the 1950s. 7 00:00:20,240 --> 00:00:24,040 He would go on to capture history as it was being made, 8 00:00:24,040 --> 00:00:28,880 bearing witness to the bloodiest conflicts of the last 50 years. 9 00:00:28,880 --> 00:00:32,720 Despite announcing his retirement from the warzone ten years ago, 10 00:00:32,720 --> 00:00:34,840 after returning from Iraq, 11 00:00:34,840 --> 00:00:39,000 McCullin decided to make a trip to Syria late last year. 12 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:43,360 He wanted to show the human side of the ongoing conflict in Aleppo, 13 00:00:43,360 --> 00:00:48,080 where, not for the first time in his career, he came under sniper fire. 14 00:00:48,080 --> 00:00:50,240 A self-confessed war junkie, 15 00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:54,800 Don McCullin's quest to bring the ugly truths of the war 16 00:00:54,800 --> 00:00:59,960 to international attention would come at great personal cost. 17 00:00:59,960 --> 00:01:03,160 Jacqui and David Morris's often graphic film 18 00:01:03,160 --> 00:01:07,640 lays bare the addiction to danger, and the commitment to justice, 19 00:01:07,640 --> 00:01:10,600 that lie at the heart of this extraordinary life. 20 00:01:13,760 --> 00:01:19,800 This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing. 21 00:01:34,160 --> 00:01:38,560 War is partly madness, mostly insanity, 22 00:01:38,560 --> 00:01:41,000 and the rest of it is schizophrenia. 23 00:01:44,560 --> 00:01:49,160 You do ask yourself, "Why am I here? What's my purpose? 24 00:01:49,160 --> 00:01:51,920 "What's this got to do with photography?" 25 00:01:51,920 --> 00:01:55,320 And it goes on and on, the questioning. 26 00:01:55,320 --> 00:01:57,920 You're trying to stay alive, you're trying to take pictures, 27 00:01:57,920 --> 00:02:00,520 you're trying to justify your presence there. 28 00:02:00,520 --> 00:02:02,760 And you think, "What good is this going to do anyway? 29 00:02:02,760 --> 00:02:05,360 "These people have already been killed." 30 00:02:07,800 --> 00:02:10,160 There were many battles within my own mind, 31 00:02:10,160 --> 00:02:12,960 before I got to these major conflicts. 32 00:02:12,960 --> 00:02:15,080 And when I got there, I was even more confused. 33 00:02:18,760 --> 00:02:20,520 I try to stay calm. 34 00:02:20,520 --> 00:02:25,760 I try not to indulge myself in this picture-taking. 35 00:02:25,760 --> 00:02:33,120 It was something I was meant to do, but how far was I allowed to take it? 36 00:02:37,400 --> 00:02:39,600 There was a lot of hypocrisy spinning around 37 00:02:39,600 --> 00:02:41,800 inside my own mind at the time. 38 00:02:41,800 --> 00:02:47,040 I didn't really think, um, it was right to be there, 39 00:02:47,040 --> 00:02:48,920 because I sometimes felt that 40 00:02:48,920 --> 00:02:52,880 the people who were doing these terrible things 41 00:02:52,880 --> 00:02:57,880 thought, you know, that I was OK-ing it, 42 00:02:57,880 --> 00:03:00,560 which I certainly wasn't. 43 00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:26,560 The first execution I ever saw in my life 44 00:03:26,560 --> 00:03:30,040 was a dawn execution of a bomber who had killed a load of people 45 00:03:30,040 --> 00:03:33,160 in the Saigon market a few weeks before. 46 00:03:33,160 --> 00:03:36,000 And there were all these photographers and journalists, 47 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:38,880 they were all on this Jeep, you couldn't get another man on, 48 00:03:38,880 --> 00:03:42,360 and there was nowhere I could see. But I saw the event. 49 00:03:42,360 --> 00:03:44,560 They brought the man, in a Volkswagen truck. 50 00:03:44,560 --> 00:03:47,440 He got out and screamed anti-Americans. 51 00:03:47,440 --> 00:03:49,960 The firing squad shot him. 52 00:03:49,960 --> 00:03:53,280 A man stepped forward, grabbed a turf of his hair, 53 00:03:53,280 --> 00:03:55,200 and shot him through the brains. 54 00:03:55,200 --> 00:03:57,360 And I stood there with my mouth wide open. 55 00:03:57,360 --> 00:03:58,600 And I heard a man saying, 56 00:03:58,600 --> 00:04:01,880 "God, that was great stuff, did you get it, did you get it?" 57 00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:06,360 And I have never forgotten, to this day, and that was in 1965, 58 00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:08,120 and I didn't get it. 59 00:04:08,120 --> 00:04:10,400 And I never said anything about this situation 60 00:04:10,400 --> 00:04:13,640 to the people in the Sunday Times, because they would have thought 61 00:04:13,640 --> 00:04:18,240 I must have been a rank amateur not to have got such a picture. 62 00:04:18,240 --> 00:04:20,120 But, looking back, 63 00:04:20,120 --> 00:04:25,400 did I have the right to take that man's picture of his murder? 64 00:04:25,400 --> 00:04:29,760 Because, in a way, public executions are nothing less than murder. 65 00:04:29,760 --> 00:04:31,080 And I didn't get the picture. 66 00:04:41,960 --> 00:04:44,520 MUSIC AND APPLAUSE 67 00:04:52,320 --> 00:04:56,960 You came from a fairly rough background, didn't you, in London? 68 00:04:56,960 --> 00:04:59,720 It seems an unlikely ambition to have, your first ambition, 69 00:04:59,720 --> 00:05:02,800 to be a painter. Was that regarded as a bit sissy? 70 00:05:02,800 --> 00:05:05,240 Well, yes, it was, because where I live, 71 00:05:05,240 --> 00:05:07,080 you were expected to take on anybody. 72 00:05:07,080 --> 00:05:09,160 You'd never back down from an argument. 73 00:05:09,160 --> 00:05:11,600 I used to get some terrible hidings when I was a boy. 74 00:05:11,600 --> 00:05:13,320 But my father, when he was alive, 75 00:05:13,320 --> 00:05:16,400 he used to let me draw on the kitchen wall. 76 00:05:16,400 --> 00:05:19,160 And I'd actually stick pieces of paper on the wall, 77 00:05:19,160 --> 00:05:21,200 but I went over the edge, so there was always 78 00:05:21,200 --> 00:05:23,200 empty pictures with marvellous edges. 79 00:05:23,200 --> 00:05:25,040 RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER 80 00:05:25,040 --> 00:05:27,320 I lived in a house that was a tenement house, 81 00:05:27,320 --> 00:05:30,640 so we could knock huge nails in the walls and stick things on the walls. 82 00:05:30,640 --> 00:05:33,800 I wouldn't let my kids do it now but... 83 00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:37,400 My art career didn't last very long, 84 00:05:37,400 --> 00:05:40,000 because I got a junior art scholarship, 85 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:43,160 and my father died and I had to go to work. 86 00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:49,280 MUSIC: "Move It" by Cliff Richard 87 00:05:52,560 --> 00:05:54,960 # Come on, pretty baby, let's move it and a-groove it 88 00:05:57,640 --> 00:06:01,520 # Well, shake, oh, baby, shake, oh, honey, please don't lose it 89 00:06:03,280 --> 00:06:06,880 # It's rhythm that gets into your heart and soul 90 00:06:09,600 --> 00:06:12,600 # Well, let me tell you, baby, it's called rock'n'roll. # 91 00:06:15,320 --> 00:06:20,080 I took a set of pictures of the boys I grew up with. 92 00:06:20,080 --> 00:06:24,000 They were involved in the killing of a policeman. 93 00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:26,040 They didn't actually kill the policeman, 94 00:06:26,040 --> 00:06:28,800 the rival gang that came from Islington, 95 00:06:28,800 --> 00:06:30,920 they were responsible for that killing. 96 00:06:30,920 --> 00:06:33,600 So, I took the photos to the Observer. 97 00:06:33,600 --> 00:06:35,640 They asked me to do more. I did more. 98 00:06:35,640 --> 00:06:37,120 They published the photos. 99 00:06:37,120 --> 00:06:40,640 They gave me the princely sum of £50. 100 00:06:40,640 --> 00:06:47,040 In those days, £50 from where I came from was like five weeks' wages. 101 00:06:47,040 --> 00:06:51,520 And then, I was, I suppose you could say, I was on the road to photography 102 00:06:51,520 --> 00:06:53,800 which has been a lifelong love affair. 103 00:06:53,800 --> 00:06:56,360 It has been really an amazing experience for me. 104 00:06:56,360 --> 00:06:59,760 Because you've got to remember, I don't have any education, 105 00:06:59,760 --> 00:07:01,240 I couldn't read properly. 106 00:07:01,240 --> 00:07:04,320 I came from a violent background where people were mostly interested 107 00:07:04,320 --> 00:07:08,720 in how well you could fight or steal, or do harm to society. 108 00:07:08,720 --> 00:07:15,400 So, quite honestly, having this amazing door opening, someone saying, 109 00:07:15,400 --> 00:07:20,320 "There's your freedom from ignorance and bigotry and violence." 110 00:07:20,320 --> 00:07:24,320 It was amazing I managed to escape from Finsbury Park. 111 00:07:26,880 --> 00:07:30,040 I've often wondered, how did he get that first memorable, 112 00:07:30,040 --> 00:07:33,560 urban landscape of the lads, the gang, 113 00:07:33,560 --> 00:07:36,080 The Guv'nors, as they were called in East London, 114 00:07:36,080 --> 00:07:38,480 standing in a derelict house? 115 00:07:38,480 --> 00:07:41,560 Perfectly framed by the building, 116 00:07:41,560 --> 00:07:44,040 and seeing right through the building. 117 00:07:44,040 --> 00:07:47,880 It was so emblematic of gang warfare and the roughness of London. 118 00:07:47,880 --> 00:07:52,360 And here we have a picture which is almost beautiful in its composition. 119 00:07:52,360 --> 00:07:56,000 You could say, there is no beauty in what this gang was up to. 120 00:07:56,000 --> 00:07:59,280 But he related, he had a sensitivity. 121 00:07:59,280 --> 00:08:01,600 An empathy is something you can't fake. 122 00:08:04,920 --> 00:08:07,400 This is the bloke I gave a good hiding to. 123 00:08:07,400 --> 00:08:09,880 HE LAUGHS 124 00:08:09,880 --> 00:08:11,480 He tried to hit me with a brick. 125 00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:15,440 We had all been to a funeral. 126 00:08:15,440 --> 00:08:18,040 One of the little girls had committed suicide, 127 00:08:18,040 --> 00:08:22,480 put her head in a gas oven over some bloke I grew up with. 128 00:08:22,480 --> 00:08:25,560 We came back from the funeral, and he ran past my car 129 00:08:25,560 --> 00:08:27,920 and snapped the wing mirror off. 130 00:08:27,920 --> 00:08:29,440 And he was peeing in this alleyway, 131 00:08:29,440 --> 00:08:32,680 that's when I should really have laid into him, while he was peeing, 132 00:08:32,680 --> 00:08:36,360 because it's difficult to fight back if you're in a situation like that. 133 00:08:36,360 --> 00:08:38,960 Then he picked a brick up, came roaring at me. 134 00:08:38,960 --> 00:08:42,240 Then I managed to get hold of it and reverse the charges. 135 00:08:45,920 --> 00:08:51,000 Wasn't I lucky to have grown up in a period of the '60s, '70s, the '80s, 136 00:08:51,000 --> 00:08:53,400 when it was all happening? 137 00:08:53,400 --> 00:08:58,240 It was as if, like it was carved out for me, really. 138 00:08:58,240 --> 00:09:00,080 I did grasp the nettle, 139 00:09:00,080 --> 00:09:03,400 I didn't just look at it and think, "God, I wish I was there." 140 00:09:03,400 --> 00:09:07,880 I used to say, "I'm going to go there." And I did. 141 00:09:07,880 --> 00:09:11,520 - NEWSREEL: - Paris in the spring of 1961, 142 00:09:11,520 --> 00:09:15,360 and the time of President Kennedy's visit, was as beautiful as ever. 143 00:09:19,080 --> 00:09:22,880 I was in Paris with my wife, my new wife really, 144 00:09:22,880 --> 00:09:25,440 we'd only been married a few weeks. 145 00:09:25,440 --> 00:09:28,200 And I was like a fish out of water really, 146 00:09:28,200 --> 00:09:30,440 because I couldn't speak the language. 147 00:09:30,440 --> 00:09:34,280 And whilst we were in Paris, I saw somebody reading a newspaper. 148 00:09:34,280 --> 00:09:37,320 It was a photograph of an East German soldier 149 00:09:37,320 --> 00:09:41,400 jumping over some barbed wire, which was only, at that stage, 150 00:09:41,400 --> 00:09:44,040 separating them from the West. 151 00:09:45,640 --> 00:09:48,480 Of course, the story had been building up, 152 00:09:48,480 --> 00:09:50,280 potentially been building up. 153 00:09:50,280 --> 00:09:53,440 I looked at this photograph, it was a memorable picture. 154 00:09:53,440 --> 00:09:56,880 And I said to her, "When we get back to England," 155 00:09:56,880 --> 00:10:00,160 knowing I only had £70 in my savings account, 156 00:10:00,160 --> 00:10:02,160 "would you mind if I went to Berlin?" 157 00:10:02,160 --> 00:10:04,680 And she said, "Of course I don't mind." 158 00:10:04,680 --> 00:10:08,080 - NEWSREEL: - The East Germans don't seem to have girders enough 159 00:10:08,080 --> 00:10:09,560 to plug every hole. 160 00:10:09,560 --> 00:10:11,760 When a soldier's attention is diverted by others, 161 00:10:11,760 --> 00:10:13,680 a hole is cut in the barbed wire, 162 00:10:13,680 --> 00:10:17,160 and Khrushchev's face is slapped again. 163 00:10:17,160 --> 00:10:19,440 I rang the Observer newspaper, and they said, 164 00:10:19,440 --> 00:10:21,840 "We're not interested in you going." 165 00:10:21,840 --> 00:10:25,920 And I said, "Well, I bought the ticket." There was no commission. 166 00:10:25,920 --> 00:10:28,840 So, I got near to a place called Friedrichstrasse, 167 00:10:28,840 --> 00:10:31,800 which was the centre of all the problem. 168 00:10:31,800 --> 00:10:34,480 The Americans were facing the Russians. 169 00:10:34,480 --> 00:10:37,160 There were tanks facing each other. 170 00:10:37,160 --> 00:10:39,680 At that stage, in Friedrichstrasse, 171 00:10:39,680 --> 00:10:42,440 they were actually building the beginnings of the Berlin Wall. 172 00:10:42,440 --> 00:10:47,760 This was really the right place to be. 173 00:10:47,760 --> 00:10:50,760 - NEWSREEL: - Camera crews are harassed by reflecting mirrors 174 00:10:50,760 --> 00:10:52,200 held by East German police. 175 00:10:52,200 --> 00:10:54,680 Water hoses are played on equipment. 176 00:10:54,680 --> 00:10:57,880 Nevertheless, our reporters are able to come up with remarkable pictures, 177 00:10:57,880 --> 00:11:00,120 despite these hazards. 178 00:11:00,120 --> 00:11:02,640 My camera equipment wasn't very good, actually. 179 00:11:02,640 --> 00:11:06,320 I had a camera I had bought during my time in the air force. 180 00:11:06,320 --> 00:11:08,600 It was totally the wrong shape 181 00:11:08,600 --> 00:11:12,440 to give me the kind of pictures that I needed. 182 00:11:12,440 --> 00:11:15,440 But, nevertheless, I stretched the use of this camera, kneeling down 183 00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:19,200 and holding it up high and doing all kinds of funny things with it. 184 00:11:20,920 --> 00:11:23,640 By the time that I'd been there a few days, 185 00:11:23,640 --> 00:11:27,520 that wall went up pretty fast. And people could not escape. 186 00:11:29,480 --> 00:11:31,800 And I looked at East German soldiers 187 00:11:31,800 --> 00:11:36,160 leaning out of buildings on the other side of the wall, with binoculars. 188 00:11:36,160 --> 00:11:39,880 And looking right at me. And I thought, 189 00:11:39,880 --> 00:11:44,240 "They can't hurt me, because they're over there and I'm here." 190 00:11:44,240 --> 00:11:47,760 It was very exciting, it was at the heightened part of the Cold War 191 00:11:47,760 --> 00:11:50,280 where the Russians were quite prepared 192 00:11:50,280 --> 00:11:53,720 to make a stand against the West, and vice versa. 193 00:11:55,800 --> 00:11:58,960 What it really comes down to is that I was sitting on top of 194 00:11:58,960 --> 00:12:01,560 the most important news story in the world. 195 00:12:01,560 --> 00:12:04,040 And it was my decision, 196 00:12:05,440 --> 00:12:08,040 this intuition that took me there in the first place. 197 00:12:08,040 --> 00:12:11,440 So, I was beginning to show signs of having a brain 198 00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:14,040 that was functioning in the right direction. 199 00:12:16,560 --> 00:12:19,440 I came back to England with the film 200 00:12:19,440 --> 00:12:22,520 and got it processed in the Observer's darkroom. 201 00:12:22,520 --> 00:12:28,120 And they saw the pictures and they ran half a page of my story. 202 00:12:28,120 --> 00:12:31,440 The story was then entered into the news category 203 00:12:31,440 --> 00:12:36,080 for the News Pictures of the Year. And I won this award. 204 00:12:36,080 --> 00:12:38,720 And the Observer gave me a contract after that. 205 00:12:47,240 --> 00:12:49,560 So, I started getting better jobs at the Observer. 206 00:12:49,560 --> 00:12:53,480 I started going to all kinds of political rallies and things. 207 00:12:56,960 --> 00:12:58,640 I would go to the East End of London 208 00:12:58,640 --> 00:13:03,040 and photograph disturbances with Oswald Mosley, situations like that. 209 00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:08,880 It was a developing and an expanding situation 210 00:13:08,880 --> 00:13:10,800 for the early part of my career. 211 00:13:20,040 --> 00:13:22,560 - NEWSREEL: - The tinderbox that is Cyprus threatens to erupt 212 00:13:22,560 --> 00:13:23,960 into a full-scale war. 213 00:13:23,960 --> 00:13:28,160 Greek students demonstrate against British and US proposals 214 00:13:28,160 --> 00:13:31,320 that a force of NATO troops help maintain a truce on the island 215 00:13:31,320 --> 00:13:34,440 until differences between Greeks and Turks can be resolved. 216 00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:37,680 I walked into the Observer office one day, and the editor said to me, 217 00:13:37,680 --> 00:13:42,520 "How would you consider covering the civil war for us in Cyprus?" 218 00:13:42,520 --> 00:13:45,840 And at that point in my life, I wasn't ready. 219 00:13:45,840 --> 00:13:51,400 And I felt that, when I think about those words, I think, 220 00:13:51,400 --> 00:13:55,680 I must have been levitating. I felt as if I was rising off the ground. 221 00:13:55,680 --> 00:13:58,400 I knew that the second door was opening. 222 00:13:58,400 --> 00:14:02,240 - NEWSREEL: - The terror of civil war struck Cyprus in December. 223 00:14:02,240 --> 00:14:05,600 On Boxing Day, the British came in to stop the bloodshed. 224 00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:07,640 So, I thought, I'm going to do my best here. 225 00:14:07,640 --> 00:14:10,480 And I'm going to make an impression. This is my big chance. 226 00:14:10,480 --> 00:14:14,680 So, I went to the Turkish community. 227 00:14:14,680 --> 00:14:16,480 And they were surrounded by the Greeks. 228 00:14:16,480 --> 00:14:18,600 I managed to slip past the roadblocks and get in. 229 00:14:21,840 --> 00:14:23,040 I could hear gunfire. 230 00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:28,720 That was the first time I had heard, in my life, hostile gunfire. 231 00:14:28,720 --> 00:14:33,280 And then, suddenly, out of the cinema burst a man with a machine gun, 232 00:14:33,280 --> 00:14:37,120 and he had a raincoat on and a flat hat. 233 00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:41,600 And he looked like something like a Sicilian Mafioso bandit. 234 00:14:43,840 --> 00:14:47,000 And then people ran out with mattresses on their heads, 235 00:14:47,000 --> 00:14:50,560 women and children, as if a mattress would stop a bullet. 236 00:14:50,560 --> 00:14:54,040 And this was my baptism of war. 237 00:14:55,600 --> 00:14:58,880 I had to assess very quickly what was going on, 238 00:14:58,880 --> 00:15:01,720 where the fire was coming from. 239 00:15:01,720 --> 00:15:06,520 As the day wore on, we were trapped in these empty streets. 240 00:15:06,520 --> 00:15:09,880 There were groups of fighters, Turkish defenders. 241 00:15:09,880 --> 00:15:13,560 And funny, curious things caught my eye. 242 00:15:13,560 --> 00:15:16,560 I could remember a group of men behind barricades. 243 00:15:16,560 --> 00:15:19,120 It was almost like the Spanish Civil War, really. 244 00:15:19,120 --> 00:15:24,040 And by the barricade, there were men with an ill-assorted bunch of weapons 245 00:15:24,040 --> 00:15:29,240 and old, almost muskety-looking kind of museum pieces. 246 00:15:29,240 --> 00:15:35,040 But standing near this group of men was a beautiful dog. 247 00:15:40,880 --> 00:15:44,920 I thought, "Why is it that these things come to you, 248 00:15:44,920 --> 00:15:47,960 "when you should be thinking about more serious things?" 249 00:15:47,960 --> 00:15:52,680 But to be truthful, these little things sometimes tell you 250 00:15:52,680 --> 00:15:57,520 much more about a story than the obvious things. 251 00:15:57,520 --> 00:16:01,040 So, I think what I'm getting down to here is, 252 00:16:01,040 --> 00:16:02,920 we're talking about sensitivity. 253 00:16:05,400 --> 00:16:09,720 What I had to realise at the time, I was learning a new trade. 254 00:16:11,320 --> 00:16:14,960 I was learning about the price of humanity and its sufferings. 255 00:16:19,320 --> 00:16:22,320 - NEWSREEL: - Now, four months later, the armed forces of both sides 256 00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:26,000 are still defying the UN's attempts to keep the peace. 257 00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:30,240 And the Cyprus situation is as dangerous and complex as ever. 258 00:16:30,240 --> 00:16:32,320 The UN is powerless to do anything 259 00:16:32,320 --> 00:16:35,680 that would really help restore law and order. 260 00:16:39,080 --> 00:16:42,440 I saw a whole village trying to evacuate, they were being attacked, 261 00:16:42,440 --> 00:16:46,560 to somewhere with more safety, like a school building. 262 00:16:46,560 --> 00:16:50,800 And there was this one old lady, who was lame, and she had two sticks. 263 00:16:50,800 --> 00:16:53,480 And she really couldn't get those legs moving. 264 00:16:53,480 --> 00:16:56,040 And there was a British soldier trying to coax her along, 265 00:16:56,040 --> 00:16:59,960 persuade her to hurry up before she'd probably lose her life. 266 00:16:59,960 --> 00:17:02,680 And I was with a friend of mine, I said, "This is ridiculous." 267 00:17:02,680 --> 00:17:04,960 I took one picture of the soldier and the old lady, 268 00:17:04,960 --> 00:17:06,080 and I put my cameras down. 269 00:17:06,080 --> 00:17:09,000 And I scooped this old lady up in my arms. 270 00:17:09,000 --> 00:17:12,560 It was like scooping up some rag doll that had fallen from a child's pram. 271 00:17:12,560 --> 00:17:16,080 I just ran and ran with her. I don't know why I did it. 272 00:17:16,080 --> 00:17:19,960 But I didn't really want to see that old lady shot down and killed. 273 00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:24,520 And I went back to my position as a photographer, and I carried on. 274 00:17:24,520 --> 00:17:26,240 But it made me feel good. 275 00:17:26,240 --> 00:17:29,880 I it made me feel as if I wasn't just there as a voyeur 276 00:17:29,880 --> 00:17:34,840 that was enjoying other people's misery and possible deaths. 277 00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:37,360 It's a very fine line. 278 00:17:37,360 --> 00:17:41,280 I've been constantly accused of taking terrible pictures 279 00:17:41,280 --> 00:17:43,680 and people saying, "Did you ever help anyone?" 280 00:17:43,680 --> 00:17:47,640 Of course I did. But I don't want to brag about it. 281 00:17:47,640 --> 00:17:50,880 I did it sometimes to clear my own conscience. 282 00:18:06,280 --> 00:18:08,920 These little battles were erupting all over 283 00:18:08,920 --> 00:18:13,160 the northern part of the island of Cyprus, where the Turks lived. 284 00:18:13,160 --> 00:18:15,720 We saw this soldier looking at the bodies, and I said, 285 00:18:15,720 --> 00:18:19,520 "What's happening?" He said, "There's been some killing," he said, 286 00:18:19,520 --> 00:18:24,200 "There's a dead body up there and some more in that house." 287 00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:28,160 I knocked on the door, I tapped on this door and there was no answer. 288 00:18:29,480 --> 00:18:32,040 And I let myself in. 289 00:18:32,040 --> 00:18:36,600 And the first thing I was greeted with was warm blood. 290 00:18:40,080 --> 00:18:42,280 These men had been murdered the day before, 291 00:18:42,280 --> 00:18:45,160 and the warm, early morning sunlight had penetrated through 292 00:18:45,160 --> 00:18:47,600 the glass door of this house. 293 00:18:47,600 --> 00:18:50,640 And I closed the door and I tiptoed around the room, 294 00:18:50,640 --> 00:18:54,080 and I got myself in a corner, and I was taking the first shot. 295 00:18:54,080 --> 00:18:57,840 And suddenly, the door opened and, to my horror, the whole family burst in. 296 00:19:00,240 --> 00:19:05,280 I thought, my God, they're going to be really cross, finding me in here. 297 00:19:05,280 --> 00:19:10,520 To my astonishment, they weren't, so I carried on photographing. 298 00:19:10,520 --> 00:19:14,040 And there was a woman who started screaming like mad. 299 00:19:14,040 --> 00:19:17,640 And the truth was that it was her husband who was just below my feet, 300 00:19:17,640 --> 00:19:21,640 who was dead. A new husband at that, they had only been married a week. 301 00:19:21,640 --> 00:19:25,920 And the Greeks came the day before and attacked this community 302 00:19:25,920 --> 00:19:29,000 and murdered these people in cold blood in this house. 303 00:19:34,840 --> 00:19:40,320 I'd go into a village one day, and I got there in the early morning. 304 00:19:40,320 --> 00:19:42,920 And they were finding bodies of Turkish men 305 00:19:42,920 --> 00:19:44,440 who were defending the villages. 306 00:19:44,440 --> 00:19:46,480 And then they were coming back to the village 307 00:19:46,480 --> 00:19:48,840 and telling women that their husbands had been killed. 308 00:19:48,840 --> 00:19:52,360 And then you saw these Goya-esque kind of poses 309 00:19:52,360 --> 00:19:55,120 of people looking up to Christ. 310 00:19:55,120 --> 00:19:57,560 I've noticed that a lot in wars. 311 00:19:57,560 --> 00:20:01,800 When people are in deep grief and emotion, they look up 312 00:20:01,800 --> 00:20:05,880 as if they can see God himself there, offering them some help. 313 00:20:05,880 --> 00:20:08,960 And you see that in Goya's drawings. 314 00:20:08,960 --> 00:20:11,280 Before men are being shot or massacred, 315 00:20:11,280 --> 00:20:13,200 they look up, or they are praying, 316 00:20:13,200 --> 00:20:17,640 and it's part of that religious nature of the great painters. 317 00:20:19,560 --> 00:20:22,280 That moment is so classic. 318 00:20:22,280 --> 00:20:25,680 I call it one of the decisive moments in photography. 319 00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:30,080 Because it combines the news moments with the compositional elements 320 00:20:30,080 --> 00:20:32,360 which make a photograph in themselves. 321 00:20:32,360 --> 00:20:37,360 So, there is something, a second or two would have made a difference. 322 00:20:39,600 --> 00:20:42,040 I asked Don how he took the picture. 323 00:20:42,040 --> 00:20:46,200 As I recall it, he actually had to fall to his knees quickly to get it 324 00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:48,760 because he just sensed it was coming. 325 00:20:56,440 --> 00:20:59,800 I mean, OK, I talk as if there's a lot of poetry in me. 326 00:20:59,800 --> 00:21:03,640 There isn't. I'm a photographer. I am neither an artist or a poet. 327 00:21:03,640 --> 00:21:05,960 I'm a photographer. 328 00:21:05,960 --> 00:21:10,720 And one of the things I've learned most of all, erm, 329 00:21:10,720 --> 00:21:13,200 over and above photography, 330 00:21:13,200 --> 00:21:17,840 the very best qualifications you can have when you are in this situation, 331 00:21:17,840 --> 00:21:21,720 and you are exercising this duty as a photographer, or whatever, reporter, 332 00:21:21,720 --> 00:21:27,320 is that it's much better to be on the side of humanity. 333 00:21:29,680 --> 00:21:33,640 All this was coming at me so fast, this responsibility. 334 00:21:33,640 --> 00:21:37,120 And I felt, almost from the word go, I got a grip of it, 335 00:21:37,120 --> 00:21:40,160 and I thought, I understand what I'm doing for the first time. 336 00:21:40,160 --> 00:21:41,840 I'm meant to be doing this. 337 00:22:32,560 --> 00:22:35,240 There was a decree put out that journalists were not allowed 338 00:22:35,240 --> 00:22:38,800 to leave Leopoldville. 339 00:22:38,800 --> 00:22:41,640 And then I thought, here I am, all this way out here in the Congo 340 00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:44,720 and now I can't even leave out of the capital. 341 00:22:44,720 --> 00:22:47,200 So, I had it in mind, and I knew that there were mercenaries 342 00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:49,200 operating up in a place called Stanleyville. 343 00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:51,000 I quickly managed to discover all this. 344 00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:52,920 I've been appointed by Mr Tchombe 345 00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:55,400 to recruit a number, which I can't disclose, 346 00:22:55,400 --> 00:22:58,680 of men to form a fighting unit in the Congo, 347 00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:00,280 to dispel the present rebellion. 348 00:23:00,280 --> 00:23:02,120 "Mercenary" is a dirty word. 349 00:23:02,120 --> 00:23:04,920 This unit is going to change the meaning of that word, 350 00:23:04,920 --> 00:23:08,080 and "mercenary" will now be a badge of honour, 351 00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:11,800 rather than a dirty word in the English language. 352 00:23:11,800 --> 00:23:15,280 I met one of these mercenaries, and his name was Alan Murphy. 353 00:23:15,280 --> 00:23:18,240 And I said, "Could you get me some information about this?" 354 00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:20,600 And I pumped him for how to get there. 355 00:23:20,600 --> 00:23:23,240 And he said, what happens was, every morning, 356 00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:26,800 a C130 American plane, under the CIA, 357 00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:31,760 would take groups of mercenaries to Stanleyville. 358 00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:34,760 And I said, "Could you get me one of your shirts and a pair of trousers, 359 00:23:34,760 --> 00:23:36,680 "and if I sleep overnight in the hotel, 360 00:23:36,680 --> 00:23:39,920 "would you kick my bed in the morning when you get the call to leave?" 361 00:23:39,920 --> 00:23:42,360 And he did just that. 362 00:23:42,360 --> 00:23:47,320 And I see myself now, many, 40 years ago, standing on that runway 363 00:23:47,320 --> 00:23:50,640 with the early-morning rain shower that had passed. 364 00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:53,720 And a man with a clipboard, who happened to be a CIA man, 365 00:23:53,720 --> 00:23:58,880 asking people's names. And I thought, I've had it. I've had it, you know. 366 00:23:58,880 --> 00:24:01,480 Then he came up to me and he said, "What's your name?" 367 00:24:01,480 --> 00:24:04,480 And I said, "McCullin." He said, "You're not on the list." 368 00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:06,600 I said, "I should be," and my legs were like jelly. 369 00:24:06,600 --> 00:24:09,880 And he said, he wrote my name down, he said, "OK, climb aboard." 370 00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:13,720 And I'd cracked this amazing no-go situation. 371 00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:08,360 When I arrived in Stanleyville, 372 00:25:08,360 --> 00:25:10,800 I could hear a lot of shouting and screaming, 373 00:25:10,800 --> 00:25:14,160 people crying and gunfire. 374 00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:18,760 And I saw gangs of boys who had been tied up, and they were being beaten 375 00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:21,280 and shot in the back of the head and kicked into the river. 376 00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:22,720 I was looking at all this. 377 00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:26,160 I had my little camera in my bag, and 20 rolls of film. 378 00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:29,040 And I thought, how am I going to bring my camera out now 379 00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,000 and declare that I shouldn't be here and I'm not a mercenary? 380 00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:33,960 Because it was a huge gamble. 381 00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:44,360 And it was the Congolese gendarmerie who were killing these people, 382 00:25:44,360 --> 00:25:47,760 torturing them, dragging them behind trucks on wires, 383 00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:49,360 it was really terrible. 384 00:25:49,360 --> 00:25:51,480 They were skinned alive, some of them. 385 00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,640 It was a kind of wood yard, and they were sitting in a corner, shivering. 386 00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:03,520 Knowing that any moment, they would be shot. 387 00:26:06,360 --> 00:26:09,160 And then they dragged some of these boys out in front of me 388 00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:11,640 and started brutalising them. 389 00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:15,640 And I had no power, by the way, to prevent this. 390 00:26:18,440 --> 00:26:20,160 I took a few pictures and I walked away. 391 00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:25,360 I thought, you know, you have a moral sense of purpose and duty. 392 00:26:25,360 --> 00:26:30,320 You have to work out which of those purposes and duty you are there for. 393 00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:32,520 It's very difficult too. 394 00:26:32,520 --> 00:26:36,720 You want to take this picture, and you want to stop it. 395 00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:39,120 And it's a very difficult thing. 396 00:26:39,120 --> 00:26:41,040 It came up more and more my life, 397 00:26:41,040 --> 00:26:43,240 seeing people executed in front of me. 398 00:26:49,560 --> 00:26:51,080 GUNFIRE 399 00:26:57,200 --> 00:27:00,400 RAPID GUNFIRE 400 00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:03,080 There was a man called Mike Hoare 401 00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:06,880 who was battling on the other side of this river, the Lualaba. 402 00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:10,200 He was in charge of Fifth Commando, 403 00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:12,640 these mercenaries I had teamed up with. 404 00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:15,320 So, I arrived on the other side. 405 00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:18,880 And then, Mike Hoare came to me and said, 406 00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:22,000 "What are you doing, who are you? Where have you come from?" 407 00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:25,200 And I said, "I have to be clean with you now, 408 00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:27,520 "I'm working for the Observer newspaper." 409 00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:30,680 He wouldn't have understood the German magazine, Quick. 410 00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:34,960 I immediately fell back on my English heritage. 411 00:27:34,960 --> 00:27:36,960 So, he said, "I'll deal with you in the morning, 412 00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:39,880 "I'm going to hand you over to the Congolese military." 413 00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:44,480 Which one knew right away, that would be curtains. 414 00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:50,560 He said, "I admire what you have done, but I don't condone it." 415 00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:53,760 And then he totally switched his whole kind of attitude 416 00:27:53,760 --> 00:27:56,440 and offered to take me on this journey 417 00:27:56,440 --> 00:28:00,360 chasing these Simbas who had abducted these nuns. 418 00:28:00,360 --> 00:28:04,040 And they were cutting them to pieces with machetes on the way down, 419 00:28:04,040 --> 00:28:05,680 as they were fleeing from us. 420 00:28:08,480 --> 00:28:10,480 And we caught up with them. 421 00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:24,240 There was goodness in Mike Hoare, 422 00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:28,480 but there wasn't much goodness in what he stood for, really. 423 00:28:28,480 --> 00:28:31,200 He was there for the adventure and the money. 424 00:28:42,880 --> 00:28:46,120 There was one mercenary Rhodesian and I was sleeping in the same room 425 00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:49,440 and he had a whole box of stuff and I said, "Where did you get that?" 426 00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:54,240 He said, "I've just blown the bank in town but there was no money in it, unfortunately." 427 00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:00,840 Halfway through the night, I heard gunfire 428 00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:02,480 and I woke up in a great sweat. 429 00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:05,480 This Rhodesian had got drunk and shot these two African boys, 430 00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:07,720 who were doing all the laundry and the cooking 431 00:29:07,720 --> 00:29:10,960 for these mercenaries for breakfast. 432 00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:13,280 I remember looking at one of these poor black boys, 433 00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:16,480 he was about 12 years old and his eyes were open. 434 00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:19,960 And I looked at the mercenary and he said, "They asked for it. 435 00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:23,640 "I found a weapon on them." Which wasn't true. 436 00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:27,040 You know, some of these mercenaries, 437 00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:30,360 they just had a lust for killing Africans. 438 00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:32,920 HE MOANS 439 00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:34,560 I hated them in the end. 440 00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:37,560 GUNSHOT/HE SHOUTS 441 00:29:42,400 --> 00:29:45,160 When I came away from these atrocities, I kept thinking, 442 00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:47,400 "How am I going to get through this?" 443 00:29:47,400 --> 00:29:50,520 I love what I'm doing, I love photography but, you know, 444 00:29:50,520 --> 00:29:54,640 this other stuff is really too awful to live with, you know. 445 00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:57,520 And sometimes people used to say to me, "Do you have nightmares?" 446 00:29:57,520 --> 00:29:59,400 I would say, "No. 447 00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:03,400 "Only in the daytime, when my eyes are open and I'm awake 448 00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,800 "and my memory is, you know, on full alert." 449 00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:11,440 So when I see... I love photography, 450 00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:15,640 I love being in my darkroom, but even my darkroom is a haunted place. 451 00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:19,360 I go in there with the red light and it's like being in a womb 452 00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:23,960 and I play that music, which is only classical music, 453 00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:28,000 it somehow pleases me, but at the same moment, 454 00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:31,360 it takes me down and down and down to where I don't want to go. 455 00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:34,040 It's like as if I'm drowning in a very deep ocean... 456 00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:38,800 ..and I'm trying to get back to the top again to see the daylight. 457 00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:42,400 So, you know, I don't just take photographs. I think. 458 00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:44,440 CLASSICAL MUSIC 459 00:31:10,840 --> 00:31:12,840 I would come back to Finsbury Park, 460 00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:14,840 because unfortunately, 461 00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:18,640 I was still living in quite poor circumstances with my new wife. 462 00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:22,240 And then, when there were odd days when I had nothing to do, 463 00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:26,640 I would go to the Wimpy bar and hang out with the same tribe, you know. 464 00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:30,280 And then they would say, "Where have you been lately?" 465 00:31:30,280 --> 00:31:33,320 I'd say, "I've been to the Congo with the mercenaries." 466 00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:35,840 And they would try to humour me... 467 00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:39,920 ..but basically, they were almost putting me down, 468 00:31:39,920 --> 00:31:42,960 as if I was living in a Walter Mitty world. 469 00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:51,600 I did about four and a half years on the Observer 470 00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:55,640 and things were beginning to slow down for me and I could also... 471 00:31:55,640 --> 00:31:58,360 I started getting the taste and the need 472 00:31:58,360 --> 00:32:01,600 to do much bigger, you know, international stories. 473 00:32:02,800 --> 00:32:06,280 And a friend of mine called David King, 474 00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:11,000 who worked at the Sunday Times, said to me, 475 00:32:11,000 --> 00:32:12,720 "Why don't you come and join us? 476 00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:15,720 "Why don't you come and do some work for us? I'll give you work." 477 00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:18,720 So I did and he sent me off to the Mississippi. 478 00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:20,760 BLUES MUSIC 479 00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:35,000 It was an amazing part of the world, the Mississippi. 480 00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:37,120 They had the sharecroppers, 481 00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:39,520 the black people who brought in the cotton, 482 00:32:39,520 --> 00:32:44,240 living in shacks and sheds, and then you had New Orleans, 483 00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:50,840 where we basically, we arrived in New Orleans and it was amazing to see. 484 00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:08,040 And there was a Ku Klux Klan rally one night. 485 00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:10,360 It was like Hollywood. 486 00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:12,400 There was the big fire cross burning, 487 00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:15,640 these rather hateful people in these ridiculous kind of outfits, 488 00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:17,640 smoking huge cigars and basically 489 00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:24,000 saying, "Welcome," but, you know, at the same time intimidating us. 490 00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:29,480 I managed to, you know, get a few pictures, which David King, 491 00:33:29,480 --> 00:33:32,720 when I came back, put together. 492 00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:35,360 You know, you can take amazing pictures, 493 00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:37,640 but you still need to have them presented 494 00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:41,800 in a way that the public can accept them and understand them. 495 00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:45,920 That was my first assignment for the Sunday Times. 496 00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:05,720 Roy Thompson was not a journalist himself, 497 00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:09,200 but he was the best friend journalism ever had. 498 00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:12,120 He was very proud of his newspapers 499 00:34:12,120 --> 00:34:14,720 and he was so proud of their independence, 500 00:34:14,720 --> 00:34:18,960 he had a card printed which he carried in his pocket. 501 00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:21,000 So when Roy Thompson was attacked, 502 00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:22,880 "Why are you papers publishing this?" 503 00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:25,960 or, "Why are you putting these war photographs in the colour magazine? 504 00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:28,400 "We advertisers don't like it." 505 00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:31,880 He would pause and take out of his pocket a little card 506 00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:35,720 and it said, it was a kind of oath he'd made, you know, 507 00:34:35,720 --> 00:34:40,440 "The newspapers that I control will always be independent 508 00:34:40,440 --> 00:34:44,240 "and will run professionally and I do not interfere in them." 509 00:34:44,240 --> 00:34:47,240 So he would put the card back in his pocket and would say, 510 00:34:47,240 --> 00:34:51,280 "You wouldn't expect me to go against my own word, would you?" 511 00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:54,840 I was very privileged because I worked on the colour magazine, 512 00:34:54,840 --> 00:34:59,760 which was directly associated with the Sunday Times newspaper. 513 00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:02,800 And I had equally wonderful people there 514 00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:07,360 who allowed me to just disappear and come back several weeks later 515 00:35:07,360 --> 00:35:10,640 and on top of all that, allow me to edit my own material. 516 00:35:10,640 --> 00:35:14,800 He knew he had the confidence that if he did his part 517 00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:18,640 and took his photographs and reported with integrity 518 00:35:18,640 --> 00:35:21,880 and accuracy and with a sense of composition, 519 00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:24,840 that it wasn't going to be interfered with 520 00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:27,880 or rejected because of some other concerns. 521 00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:32,400 He trusted me and so it meant that I would try that much harder 522 00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:34,960 for people who gave me this wonderful freedom. 523 00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:38,600 So Roy Thomson, backing his editors, 524 00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:41,240 was crucial to the career of Don McCullin. 525 00:35:41,240 --> 00:35:43,520 MUSIC: "Tin Soldier" by The Small Faces 526 00:35:58,680 --> 00:36:00,880 The '60s were packed with opportunities 527 00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:02,880 if you wanted to go to war. 528 00:36:06,720 --> 00:36:12,200 # I am a little tin soldier that wants to jump into your fire... # 529 00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:19,320 Israeli soldiers, fresh from street fighting, 530 00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:21,240 snapped one another at the Wailing Wall. 531 00:36:21,240 --> 00:36:24,000 Pictures for girlfriends, or people from Tel Aviv. 532 00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:29,240 # All I need is treat me like a man 533 00:36:29,240 --> 00:36:31,880 # Cos I ain't no child... # 534 00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:33,920 If they think that I've come back happy, 535 00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:37,400 they know that I've got something ghastly to show. 536 00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:40,600 And if I've got something ghastly to show, 537 00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:43,640 it means that I'm trying to get the message over to people 538 00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:47,040 that even though I like being in a war and I like being there 539 00:36:47,040 --> 00:36:49,400 because it's a great adventure for me, 540 00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:53,720 my duty is to be there for a reason, not just to have a bloody good time. 541 00:36:53,720 --> 00:36:56,560 I covered the battle of the citadel of Hue, 542 00:36:56,560 --> 00:36:58,560 which was the biggest battle I'd ever been in. 543 00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:01,440 I mean, I wouldn't like to go through a year without being in a war. 544 00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:03,560 And it went on for two weeks 545 00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:08,080 and that was really the beginning of real madness. 546 00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:10,160 I'm getting a bit bad, really, 547 00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:13,720 because I'm looking forward to doing two wars a year 548 00:37:13,720 --> 00:37:16,840 and if I start looking forward to doing two or even more a year, 549 00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:18,880 I'm not going to survive. 550 00:37:22,040 --> 00:37:24,600 CLASSICAL MUSIC 551 00:37:25,960 --> 00:37:27,920 GUNFIRE 552 00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:04,200 Sleeping next to dead bodies. 553 00:38:04,200 --> 00:38:07,880 Looking at men who had been run over by tanks 554 00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:10,440 and looked like Persian carpets in the road. 555 00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:13,560 People with their brains hanging out. 556 00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:18,120 Living under tables and sleeping in rat-infested rooms. 557 00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:23,680 It was like, basically, going into total madness and insanity. 558 00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:28,120 I stood for two weeks in that battle, 559 00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:31,080 watching dozens and dozens of American soldiers being killed 560 00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:33,240 and wounded and being dragged towards me. 561 00:38:33,240 --> 00:38:37,160 They looked as if they'd been taken from a butcher's shop, with blood everywhere. 562 00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:41,120 In the end, I became totally mad, free, 563 00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:43,720 running around like a tormented animal. 564 00:38:43,720 --> 00:38:45,680 CLASSICAL MUSIC 565 00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:54,680 I've got to make sure that when they look at my pictures, 566 00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:57,000 if it's on a Sunday morning after breakfast, 567 00:38:57,000 --> 00:38:59,040 that it's going to hit them hard. 568 00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:14,760 The very first man I saw in that Battle of Hue 569 00:39:14,760 --> 00:39:17,720 had been hit in the face with two bullets. 570 00:39:17,720 --> 00:39:19,760 And he had a bandage around him. 571 00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:24,320 It looked like a child who had his porridge dripping down his face, 572 00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:27,760 through this bandage, but in fact it was blood and not porridge. 573 00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:32,600 Big, gooey chunks of human gore, just coming out of his face. 574 00:39:32,600 --> 00:39:35,600 I put my camera up to my face 575 00:39:35,600 --> 00:39:38,080 and he tried to move his head, this soldier, 576 00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:41,440 but his eyes were screaming at me not to photograph him, 577 00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:44,520 so I took my camera and went somewhere else. 578 00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:48,800 There was no shortage of, you know, human flesh to photograph that day. 579 00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:57,720 Our most vivid memory of the battle 580 00:39:57,720 --> 00:40:02,840 was that it was one of the most intense battles of the Vietnam War. 581 00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:09,080 Don came in and joined us and he just kind of showed up, 582 00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:14,400 but what was unique about Don is that the other correspondents 583 00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:19,080 and photographers would show up and, what I would say, snap and go. 584 00:40:19,080 --> 00:40:22,320 They would take their pictures and then be out of there. 585 00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:26,160 Don, for whatever the reason, decided to join with us, 586 00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:31,080 stay with us and for several days, he became one of us. 587 00:40:32,760 --> 00:40:34,880 On one occasion, on more than one occasion, 588 00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:38,600 went out at great risk to himself 589 00:40:38,600 --> 00:40:43,640 to assist with bringing some of our wounded casualties back 590 00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:45,680 to where we could evacuate them. 591 00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:51,680 His classic photo of the shell-shocked Marine 592 00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:55,480 is a Delta Company Marine. 593 00:40:55,480 --> 00:40:59,480 I dropped on my knees and photographed this man. 594 00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:03,720 I shot five frames, each one singularly. 595 00:41:03,720 --> 00:41:06,200 One, two, three, four, five. 596 00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:11,320 There is not one blink of an eyelid. There's not one change. 597 00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:14,320 All those negatives are exactly the same. 598 00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:18,880 I have kept up with a sizeable number 599 00:41:18,880 --> 00:41:20,920 of the Marines from Delta Company. 600 00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:26,720 We get together periodically and that individual has not surfaced, 601 00:41:26,720 --> 00:41:30,520 so I don't know his history from that day on. 602 00:41:35,040 --> 00:41:37,560 PIANO MUSIC 603 00:41:48,720 --> 00:41:50,760 DISTANT GUNFIRE 604 00:42:02,720 --> 00:42:04,760 I photographed this giant American 605 00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:08,360 who looked like an athlete, but he was throwing a hand grenade. 606 00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:12,680 Within seconds, this sniper hit this soldier in the hand 607 00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:15,440 and he had a hand like a cauliflower. 608 00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:17,720 It was all busted and bursting open. 609 00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:23,160 The picture itself almost defeats the anti-war feeling 610 00:42:23,160 --> 00:42:26,080 that I was trying to put across, 611 00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:28,640 because he looks the picture of manhood, 612 00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:30,880 like a javelin thrower at an Olympic event. 613 00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:32,720 Instead of that, 614 00:42:32,720 --> 00:42:37,320 he was throwing a hand grenade which was meant to bring death to others. 615 00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:41,400 DISTANT GUNFIRE 616 00:42:55,640 --> 00:42:58,880 The one meaningful picture I took in that battle 617 00:42:58,880 --> 00:43:03,280 was a man who had been hit in both legs, an American Marine. 618 00:43:03,280 --> 00:43:05,440 He was being supported by two friends 619 00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:10,560 and if ever I thought, at the very moment in my atheistic kind of mind, 620 00:43:10,560 --> 00:43:14,560 that I was looking at something purely religious, was of this man, 621 00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:18,120 who looked like Jesus Christ being taken down from the cross. 622 00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:31,640 When it was over, about 50% of the Marines were casualties. 623 00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:38,240 In my own case, I went in with a company of 120 Marines 624 00:43:38,240 --> 00:43:41,800 and sailors and at the end of the battle, 625 00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:44,440 there were 39 of us that were still standing. 626 00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:54,520 So you can see from just those shots how chaotic it was. 627 00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:02,040 After two weeks, I got back to the press centre in Da Nang 628 00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:05,480 and I realised I hadn't taken my clothes off, my underwear, 629 00:44:05,480 --> 00:44:07,120 anything off for two weeks. 630 00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:11,320 And, you know, I had a beard and I was haunted-looking. 631 00:44:11,320 --> 00:44:14,480 I took those clothes off and threw them straight into the waste bin, 632 00:44:14,480 --> 00:44:17,640 my underwear and everything I stood in, and had a shower. 633 00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:24,160 I think I could have easily broke down in that shower and cried, 634 00:44:24,160 --> 00:44:27,080 you know, I was so... 635 00:44:27,080 --> 00:44:33,360 ..so drained and used and crushed by two weeks of seeing people dying. 636 00:44:34,600 --> 00:44:39,840 And you know, I think what I'm trying to say here is trying to be honest. 637 00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:44,880 You know, photography suddenly didn't come into the picture, even. 638 00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:47,320 It had nothing to do with photography. 639 00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:52,240 After a while, if you are that involved in that kind of situation, 640 00:44:52,240 --> 00:44:55,400 it's not about photography, it's about humanity. 641 00:44:55,400 --> 00:44:58,960 Still photographs do have this strong affinity 642 00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:01,000 with the way we remember, so... 643 00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:05,040 And the vibrations of a still photograph can be intense 644 00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:07,160 and can last for ever. 645 00:45:08,520 --> 00:45:12,440 I can remember that Don sometimes worries, 646 00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:18,000 I know, about, "Have I taken these risks? Is it worthwhile?" 647 00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:20,320 I can tell him it is 648 00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:25,040 because nobody can trace...it's like throwing a stone in a pond. 649 00:45:25,040 --> 00:45:27,480 The ripples go out and you can't say, 650 00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:31,480 "This ripple was caused by this stone," but they are. 651 00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:34,880 And I think the disenchantment with the Vietnam War in America 652 00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:37,960 is powerfully reinforced by some of the photographers, 653 00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:42,000 American photographers, including Don McCullin. 654 00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:48,320 Photography is the truth if it is being handled by a truthful person 655 00:45:48,320 --> 00:45:51,520 and I have to tell you that I have a lot of integrity. 656 00:45:51,520 --> 00:45:53,480 I would never tell a lie. 657 00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:57,120 I would never try to recreate something that wasn't real. 658 00:45:57,120 --> 00:46:00,560 I did a picture once where I did recreate something. 659 00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:03,120 It was the only time I ever did it, 660 00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:07,440 but I saw some Americans looting the body of a dead soldier, 661 00:46:07,440 --> 00:46:11,200 looking for souvenirs and mocking the body, mocking the person. 662 00:46:11,200 --> 00:46:13,000 And when they went away, 663 00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:15,640 having rifled all through his personal things, 664 00:46:15,640 --> 00:46:18,480 I brought them together and made a kind of montage 665 00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:22,240 of this pathetic possessions of this North Vietnamese soldier. 666 00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:25,600 It's the only time I've ever done it, 667 00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:28,920 but I thought I would make a statement for this soldier. 668 00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:30,960 I have no shame about doing that. 669 00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:36,240 I have this picture and I think it says what I was trying to make it say, that, you know, 670 00:46:36,240 --> 00:46:41,520 "Hear me. I am just a victim of war." 671 00:46:41,520 --> 00:46:44,760 I was trying to say this about this young man. 672 00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:52,920 We had total freedom in Vietnam. 673 00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:56,840 That, of course, made the Americans feel, 674 00:46:56,840 --> 00:46:59,480 when the war finally came to an end, 675 00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:02,000 that it was the media that let them down. 676 00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:06,000 They felt a bit upset about that, because they had given us 677 00:47:06,000 --> 00:47:09,400 every facility and all they got in exchange was, you know, 678 00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:14,080 that public opinion turned against the war in Vietnam. 679 00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:20,840 So if you go to Afghanistan now, you are totally controlled. 680 00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:23,720 They are never going to be allowed to take the kind of photographs 681 00:47:23,720 --> 00:47:29,240 I did in Vietnam of the real thing, the battle, the price of war 682 00:47:29,240 --> 00:47:36,120 and the suffering and loss, so the whole rulebook has been rewritten. 683 00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:39,120 And it doesn't come out in our favour. 684 00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:46,520 You just said it's a rotten job 685 00:47:46,520 --> 00:47:49,400 and yet you have, in fact, sought it out. 686 00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:52,520 You've sought out war and famine and misery 687 00:47:52,520 --> 00:47:55,520 in all the time I've known you, which has been a long, long time. 688 00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:58,160 Yes, I did it because I thought it was just going to be soldiers, 689 00:47:58,160 --> 00:47:59,600 and then when I got to war, 690 00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:02,240 I thought it was amazingly exciting to lay under 691 00:48:02,240 --> 00:48:05,080 a barrage of shells dropping on me, or a sniper trying to get me. 692 00:48:05,080 --> 00:48:07,680 I thought, you know, that was a challenge, 693 00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:10,480 and I have swum around with many dead bodies in canals 694 00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:13,920 to get by them when the sniper is working a ridge for me. 695 00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:17,680 I felt I wanted to put my fingers up and say, "You missed it, mate." 696 00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:20,600 And, you know, I had a very cocky attitude about warfare, 697 00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:25,160 but then I started coming in contact with the real victims 698 00:48:25,160 --> 00:48:27,840 and they are always the poor people who are not informed. 699 00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:30,520 They don't have the Mercedes-Benz to get away. 700 00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:33,720 They don't have the communication or the money to move off quick. 701 00:48:33,720 --> 00:48:37,080 They are always the very poorest people who get clobbered. 702 00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:40,760 And the amazing thing is that is where I started in my life, 703 00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:42,800 living with poor people, 704 00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:45,240 and when I am with them in those circumstances, 705 00:48:45,240 --> 00:48:49,480 I have a very close affinity and understanding of what their lot is. 706 00:48:51,560 --> 00:48:55,200 # I presume you never noticed 707 00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:02,200 # How much I really cared... # 708 00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:03,840 You are friends, aren't you? 709 00:49:03,840 --> 00:49:07,360 - You are buddies, aren't you? - Well, we're all buddies. 710 00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:12,920 Can you look where my elbow is? 711 00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:16,000 I want to see your face, if you don't mind. That's fine. 712 00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:20,360 You're OK, aren't you? You don't mind? You don't mind me? 713 00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:24,000 I'm not bullying you around, am I? OK, thanks. 714 00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:26,360 I don't want to take liberties, you know. 715 00:49:35,320 --> 00:49:37,800 I could have spent the rest of my life working 716 00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:40,960 in Aldgate and Whitechapel, it's all there. 717 00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:43,040 Photographically, it's all there. 718 00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:47,920 It is a totally, what do they call it... 719 00:49:50,640 --> 00:49:55,320 ..Hogarthian kind of experience, when you are doing these pictures. 720 00:49:57,000 --> 00:49:59,240 PIANO MUSIC 721 00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:10,600 This is one of my favourite pictures and I've never, 722 00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:12,480 ever printed it before. 723 00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:14,720 Look at these men's hands. 724 00:50:14,720 --> 00:50:17,280 They are all standing up asleep, these men. 725 00:50:29,920 --> 00:50:32,800 These people used to try and put the dead eye on you. 726 00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:34,960 By that, they would try to stare you out. 727 00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:38,400 You must never flinch away like that. You must stare them out. 728 00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:43,760 This is a woman called Jean. 729 00:50:43,760 --> 00:50:47,520 She used to hang out under the arches of Liverpool Street Station. 730 00:50:48,520 --> 00:50:50,520 She used to curtsey when I went up. 731 00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:52,520 She used to say, "Hello, Captain Mark." 732 00:50:52,520 --> 00:50:55,400 I said, "Why do you keep calling me Captain Mark?" 733 00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:58,400 And she said, "Because you look like Captain Mark Phillips." 734 00:50:58,400 --> 00:51:00,440 She said, "Would you like some tea?" 735 00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:02,560 And I said, "You haven't got any milk." 736 00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:05,760 She said, "I can always get it outside of people's front doors." 737 00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:08,120 I loved her. 738 00:51:08,120 --> 00:51:10,920 In fact, what I did, I found her somewhere to live. 739 00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:15,600 This is a picture I really like. 740 00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:18,960 It's like a fallen woman from the turn of the century. 741 00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:23,120 I did this in Chapel Market on Sunday morning when I was very young. 742 00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:25,920 She's been a posh woman, this woman. 743 00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:28,960 You can tell by the handbag, tell by the clothes. 744 00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:36,320 They're all young, now. They are not old people like this. 745 00:51:42,240 --> 00:51:44,520 I think one of the best portraits I ever did 746 00:51:44,520 --> 00:51:46,920 was this man in Spitalfields Market. 747 00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:49,840 He was actually lying by the embers of an all-night fire 748 00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:52,800 that these homeless men used to congregate around. 749 00:51:52,800 --> 00:51:55,080 He sat up and looked at me full-face. 750 00:51:55,080 --> 00:51:58,600 I just held his stare and I just brought my Nikon camera up 751 00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:01,840 to my eye and took this picture and he never moved an eyelid. 752 00:52:01,840 --> 00:52:04,600 I was looking at the bluest eyes you've ever seen 753 00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:06,640 and his hair was matted. 754 00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:10,480 I felt as if I was looking at one of those Neptune images 755 00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:14,320 of a man under the sea, you know, with a trident. 756 00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:16,560 It was quite extraordinary. 757 00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:20,120 So pleased with the picture. 758 00:52:24,360 --> 00:52:27,280 MUSIC: "Blue Peter Theme" 759 00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:30,080 This year it's a matter of life and death. 760 00:52:30,080 --> 00:52:32,120 GUNSHOT 761 00:52:32,120 --> 00:52:35,440 There has been a war going on in West Africa for two years now. 762 00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:38,920 It's a civil war between the Biafrans and the Nigerians. 763 00:52:38,920 --> 00:52:43,480 We're not going to say which side is right or which side is wrong, 764 00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:46,040 except that all war is always wrong. 765 00:53:12,160 --> 00:53:14,200 I went two or three times. 766 00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:17,320 Aeroplanes that used to take in aid 767 00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:21,000 used to land on an extended road, which was their airstrip. 768 00:53:21,000 --> 00:53:24,360 It was called Uli Airstrip and you went at night 769 00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:26,720 and the Federal Government had hired, 770 00:53:26,720 --> 00:53:29,760 you know, Russian pilots and foreign pilots 771 00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:31,760 to try and shoot these planes down. 772 00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:34,320 This one is flying the other side of the mission church, 773 00:53:34,320 --> 00:53:35,960 sweeping to the right. 774 00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:38,080 Streaking the ground as they move, 775 00:53:38,080 --> 00:53:40,760 dropping incendiary bombs and fragmentation bombs 776 00:53:40,760 --> 00:53:42,880 in the places around here. 777 00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:49,880 So, going in to Uli Airstrip at night was a very hairy experience. 778 00:53:49,880 --> 00:53:54,120 There are crews out there willing to fly, despite the lack of permission 779 00:53:54,120 --> 00:53:57,160 and we will just try and fly in. 780 00:53:57,160 --> 00:54:00,920 - But you stand a good chance of being shot down? - I don't think so, no. 781 00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:05,240 They seem to have been fairly trigger-happy in the past, though. 782 00:54:05,240 --> 00:54:08,600 Anyway, we are going to try and let us see. 783 00:54:08,600 --> 00:54:11,240 Ms Ryder, why are you going as well? 784 00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:16,520 Well, because one feels very concerned, clearly, 785 00:54:16,520 --> 00:54:20,120 with anyone who is suffering any distress anywhere 786 00:54:20,120 --> 00:54:25,760 and partly because one has seen a situation in Europe, 787 00:54:25,760 --> 00:54:29,640 in the past, perhaps similar to this. 788 00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:32,120 PIANO MUSIC 789 00:54:51,240 --> 00:54:54,480 I walked into a camp which was actually an old school building 790 00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:58,320 and there were 800 dying children, standing there, waiting for me. 791 00:55:01,240 --> 00:55:04,960 You know, when you go into a camp with 800 dying children, 792 00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:08,560 some of whom are actually dropping down and dying in front of me, 793 00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:12,760 they think you're coming with some form of salvation. 794 00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:16,200 They don't realise you're coming to take pictures and get information. 795 00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:20,080 That's not what they want. You know, they want food. 796 00:55:35,400 --> 00:55:39,000 I saw this particular boy that haunts me to this day. 797 00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:41,560 He was an albino boy and he was standing, looking at me. 798 00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:44,920 Barely managing to stand on his spindly legs. 799 00:55:44,920 --> 00:55:47,200 When you're an albino in Africa, 800 00:55:47,200 --> 00:55:50,440 you're singled out all the time for bullying and God knows what. 801 00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:53,440 He was clutching a French corned beef tin, 802 00:55:53,440 --> 00:55:57,760 some previous aid gift which he'd licked the interior completely dry. 803 00:55:57,760 --> 00:56:00,880 And I thought, "I can't look at this boy." It was too much. 804 00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:03,320 He was staring at me, so I went somewhere else 805 00:56:03,320 --> 00:56:07,040 and spoke to a doctor, cos another child had collapsed 806 00:56:07,040 --> 00:56:10,320 and was dying and suddenly, somebody touched my hand 807 00:56:10,320 --> 00:56:14,360 and I looked down and it was the albino boy, he was holding my hand. 808 00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:16,760 And I thought, "Why are you doing this to me?" 809 00:56:16,760 --> 00:56:20,680 It was like he'd honed in on me and he was really paining me, 810 00:56:20,680 --> 00:56:23,320 making me feel so ashamed. 811 00:56:23,320 --> 00:56:26,720 So I gave him a barley sugar from my pocket and he went away 812 00:56:26,720 --> 00:56:30,640 and he stood at a distance, licking this barley sugar. 813 00:56:30,640 --> 00:56:33,720 There were children of two years old, 814 00:56:33,720 --> 00:56:37,360 crawling around on their stomachs with their anus hanging out. 815 00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:41,400 I've never seen anything so terrible in all my life, 816 00:56:41,400 --> 00:56:44,640 the inside of their whole backside 817 00:56:44,640 --> 00:56:48,440 had kind of invertedly kind of suddenly fell out 818 00:56:48,440 --> 00:56:51,040 and they were dragging themselves around 819 00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:53,960 with this inside-out situation of their bottoms, 820 00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:56,720 with flies hanging on as they crawled. 821 00:56:56,720 --> 00:57:00,720 I thought, this was worse than any inferno of insanity 822 00:57:00,720 --> 00:57:03,560 that you could ever experience or see in your life. 823 00:57:03,560 --> 00:57:06,080 It wasn't real, it was so horrible, so shocking. 824 00:57:07,280 --> 00:57:12,920 And, you know, I almost become, well, I almost became paralysed. 825 00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:14,600 I was so shocked. 826 00:57:14,600 --> 00:57:18,320 I thought, "Take your mind off it. Take some pictures." 827 00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:21,600 They said, "There's a girl you must see." 828 00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:24,240 They said, "Her name is Patience." 829 00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:27,120 They brought her in and she was completely naked. 830 00:57:27,120 --> 00:57:29,080 She was 16 years of age, 831 00:57:29,080 --> 00:57:32,400 days, if not one or two days, away from death. 832 00:57:32,400 --> 00:57:34,960 And I thought, "How am I going to do this?" 833 00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:39,440 And they sat her down and I asked the nurse 834 00:57:39,440 --> 00:57:44,280 if she would place her hands over the lower part of her body, 835 00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:46,120 cos I thought, you know, 836 00:57:46,120 --> 00:57:47,880 "If I'm going to do this picture 837 00:57:47,880 --> 00:57:49,960 "to show this terrible, shocking creature, 838 00:57:49,960 --> 00:57:53,360 "I'm going to do it with as much dignity as I can rustle up 839 00:57:53,360 --> 00:57:56,720 "and at least not take advantage of her nakedness." 840 00:58:02,560 --> 00:58:05,480 You've never seen a more dignified person, you know, 841 00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:07,480 you know, inches away from death. 842 00:58:08,960 --> 00:58:11,000 PIANO MUSIC 843 00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:22,280 And I remember one day seeing a woman trying to feed a child at the breast. 844 00:58:22,280 --> 00:58:26,040 There was nothing for the child at the breast. 845 00:58:26,040 --> 00:58:29,520 And I saw some writing at the back, in the far distance. 846 00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:33,680 And after I'd photographed the woman, who, believe it or not, 847 00:58:33,680 --> 00:58:36,920 was only 24 years of age and she looked like 65, 848 00:58:36,920 --> 00:58:39,960 I went and read the writing in the far distance on the wall 849 00:58:39,960 --> 00:58:43,560 and it had on the wall, "Today I am reborn." 850 00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:53,000 And that little inscription took my legs away from me. 851 00:58:53,000 --> 00:58:55,920 You know, you can go through so much as a photographer, 852 00:58:55,920 --> 00:58:58,040 you put yourself there. 853 00:58:58,040 --> 00:59:01,680 You don't ask, you know, you don't ask why you are there. 854 00:59:01,680 --> 00:59:04,800 You go there and the same time you put yourself there. 855 00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:06,720 You could refuse if you want. 856 00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:09,680 I went there, but when I went there, I photographed these people 857 00:59:09,680 --> 00:59:14,440 to show they had more dignity than most of us will ever dream of, 858 00:59:14,440 --> 00:59:16,920 that being in the last throes of their life. 859 00:59:28,040 --> 00:59:32,240 His awareness of the futility of it, 860 00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:39,240 as well as the direct sight of these people dying on their feet... 861 00:59:41,520 --> 00:59:43,600 ..moved him enormously. 862 00:59:43,600 --> 00:59:45,320 He always had empathy, of course, 863 00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:49,400 with the soldier who was shot, but here he was looking at civilians. 864 00:59:49,400 --> 00:59:53,040 Men and women without any clue about what was going on, 865 00:59:53,040 --> 00:59:55,440 dying because of the ambitions 866 00:59:55,440 --> 00:59:58,720 of some of the power-hungry people in the country. 867 01:00:00,600 --> 01:00:04,800 MUSIC: "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd 868 01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:24,000 # If I leave here tomorrow 869 01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:29,200 # Would you still remember me? 870 01:00:33,400 --> 01:00:39,640 # I must be travelling on now... # 871 01:00:40,760 --> 01:00:44,720 I spent my whole life travelling the world. I was really on the move. 872 01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:54,280 You know, I was constantly at London Airport 873 01:00:54,280 --> 01:00:57,440 and waving goodbye to my little family. 874 01:00:58,680 --> 01:01:01,480 # And this bird shall never change... # 875 01:01:09,120 --> 01:01:11,360 I was very eager, as always, 876 01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:14,600 and ambitious to get to the front of the fighting. 877 01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:16,320 And the next thing I know, 878 01:01:16,320 --> 01:01:18,920 we walked into an ambush and all hell broke loose. 879 01:01:18,920 --> 01:01:20,960 GUNFIRE 880 01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:25,520 There was tremendous, heavy AK-47 fire. 881 01:01:25,520 --> 01:01:28,200 And I immediately ran down into the side of the road, 882 01:01:28,200 --> 01:01:30,240 which is like a culvert. 883 01:01:34,240 --> 01:01:37,240 And I thought, "I'm going to get my tail out of here." 884 01:01:37,240 --> 01:01:40,280 Because, you know, what does one picture mean of a soldier under fire 885 01:01:40,280 --> 01:01:42,120 if it's going to cost you your life? 886 01:01:42,120 --> 01:01:45,120 For the first time, my nerve went. 887 01:01:45,120 --> 01:01:47,800 I knelt behind a tube and there was an almighty explosion. 888 01:01:47,800 --> 01:01:49,920 I was blown across the road. 889 01:01:49,920 --> 01:01:52,320 I felt this terrible burning sensation in my legs 890 01:01:52,320 --> 01:01:54,360 and everywhere from the waist downwards. 891 01:01:54,360 --> 01:01:58,160 And all my past seemed to come before me and I thought, "This is it. I'm going to die." 892 01:01:58,160 --> 01:02:01,160 So I crawled away for about 200 yards, 893 01:02:01,160 --> 01:02:03,360 only to be put on the back of a truck, 894 01:02:03,360 --> 01:02:05,920 having been stabbed with a morphine injection. 895 01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:07,800 And then they filled the lorry up 896 01:02:07,800 --> 01:02:10,720 with about half a dozen soldiers who were wounded. 897 01:02:10,720 --> 01:02:13,520 I thought, "I'm going to take my mind off my own pain 898 01:02:13,520 --> 01:02:16,840 "and I'm going to photograph what's going on in this truck." 899 01:02:17,840 --> 01:02:20,280 They put the man on the truck right next to me 900 01:02:20,280 --> 01:02:23,080 who took the full brunt of the mortar bomb that hit me, 901 01:02:23,080 --> 01:02:26,880 but he got, unfortunately, all of it in his chest and stomach. 902 01:02:26,880 --> 01:02:30,200 And he kept sitting up and trying to fight people holding him down. 903 01:02:30,200 --> 01:02:32,240 He was fighting. 904 01:02:32,240 --> 01:02:35,280 And he died on the way back in the truck to the hospital, 905 01:02:35,280 --> 01:02:37,840 because I sat up and photographed him. 906 01:02:37,840 --> 01:02:41,760 And I said, "I don't want you to take any more risks." 907 01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:44,600 They took the risks as they judged fit 908 01:02:44,600 --> 01:02:47,200 because they were independently-minded. 909 01:02:47,200 --> 01:02:50,920 And I secretly rejoiced that they brought back what they did, 910 01:02:50,920 --> 01:02:54,080 but nonetheless, the next time and the next time 911 01:02:54,080 --> 01:02:56,120 and the next time, you thought, 912 01:02:56,120 --> 01:03:01,120 "Pray to God that they are not playing Russian roulette with their own lives." 913 01:03:08,320 --> 01:03:10,360 LOUD EXPLOSION 914 01:03:14,920 --> 01:03:18,560 It was strange for me to get on an aeroplane and fly to Belfast, 915 01:03:18,560 --> 01:03:22,000 drive to Londonderry, check into the hotel. 916 01:03:23,200 --> 01:03:25,640 And you could guarantee that once the pubs turned out 917 01:03:25,640 --> 01:03:27,680 at about 3-something in the afternoon, 918 01:03:27,680 --> 01:03:29,320 that there you braced yourself 919 01:03:29,320 --> 01:03:31,680 and you knew exactly where it would be. 920 01:03:31,680 --> 01:03:35,320 It was almost like a football match. You knew where the action would be. 921 01:03:35,320 --> 01:03:37,360 SHOUTING AND SCREAMING 922 01:03:37,360 --> 01:03:40,600 It was bricks and bottles and stones 923 01:03:40,600 --> 01:03:43,640 coming at the soldiers, who then fired rubber bullets 924 01:03:43,640 --> 01:03:48,520 and CS gas back, and I used to be gassed on a regular basis. 925 01:03:48,520 --> 01:03:51,520 But from a photographer's point of view, you couldn't miss. 926 01:04:01,080 --> 01:04:04,560 It was like a theatre, really. It was like a play. 927 01:04:04,560 --> 01:04:08,680 You knew the plot, you'd seen it many times before. 928 01:04:29,960 --> 01:04:33,200 This particular day, I knew they were going to charge 929 01:04:33,200 --> 01:04:36,480 and I was standing there with my short telephoto lens 930 01:04:36,480 --> 01:04:39,800 and I took this picture of the "let's go and get them". 931 01:04:41,520 --> 01:04:45,760 I wasn't totally aware that in the shop doorway by this taxi company 932 01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:49,840 was a woman standing there, holding her mouth with total shock. 933 01:04:51,600 --> 01:04:54,200 That made my picture much more poignant, really. 934 01:05:22,480 --> 01:05:24,240 I came upon this highway 935 01:05:24,240 --> 01:05:28,320 and saw these dying soldiers in the road, and I was with a very 936 01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:32,720 nice friend of mine called Michael Nicholson, who was an ITV reporter. 937 01:05:32,720 --> 01:05:36,560 Their wounds were kind of melting into the tar itself on the road. 938 01:05:36,560 --> 01:05:38,800 So hot. 939 01:05:38,800 --> 01:05:41,240 We prised them off the road and we draped them 940 01:05:41,240 --> 01:05:44,200 across the bonnet of his Jeep. 941 01:05:44,200 --> 01:05:46,960 And I stood on the front of it and kind of leaned on them 942 01:05:46,960 --> 01:05:51,200 and we drove them back to a first aid medical centre for the army. 943 01:05:51,200 --> 01:05:55,720 And we went back the next morning to see how they were, but they had died. 944 01:06:03,800 --> 01:06:07,960 And I did lots of pictures of men coming in on that road 945 01:06:07,960 --> 01:06:09,960 with pieces of cardboard around their feet, 946 01:06:09,960 --> 01:06:12,320 because they threw their boots away 947 01:06:12,320 --> 01:06:14,920 and, of course, they didn't last long on that road. 948 01:06:17,360 --> 01:06:20,640 The whole thing was the most appalling shambles. 949 01:06:20,640 --> 01:06:23,640 It was like the retreat from Moscow. Terrible disarray. 950 01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:29,480 And so, when the Sunday Times published these pictures, 951 01:06:29,480 --> 01:06:33,040 the South Vietnamese Government put me on a blacklist, 952 01:06:33,040 --> 01:06:35,840 which I never thought for one minute existed. 953 01:06:39,240 --> 01:06:42,480 I was building this reputation as a war photographer, 954 01:06:42,480 --> 01:06:44,680 which today I really detest. 955 01:06:44,680 --> 01:06:46,520 I worked for it and then, 956 01:06:46,520 --> 01:06:50,920 when I suddenly felt that I was being acclaimed as a war photographer, 957 01:06:50,920 --> 01:06:53,120 suddenly I felt uncomfortable and dirty. 958 01:06:53,120 --> 01:06:55,320 I felt being called a war photographer 959 01:06:55,320 --> 01:06:57,360 was like being called a mercenary. 960 01:07:08,440 --> 01:07:12,480 Looking back on all that, I thought my family suffered very badly. 961 01:07:12,480 --> 01:07:15,880 I was always waving goodbye to them and one wonders in their mind, 962 01:07:15,880 --> 01:07:19,040 were they ever thinking, "Will we ever see this strange man again, 963 01:07:19,040 --> 01:07:21,240 "who is supposed to be our father?" 964 01:07:23,800 --> 01:07:26,840 But, you know, I didn't want to weaken my strength 965 01:07:26,840 --> 01:07:29,320 by thinking in a sentimental way. 966 01:07:29,320 --> 01:07:33,080 I wanted to do my job and then hopefully go home to them, 967 01:07:33,080 --> 01:07:36,280 but it was very selfish, now I look back on it. 968 01:07:36,280 --> 01:07:38,840 And it eventually ruined by marriage. 969 01:08:09,440 --> 01:08:11,480 GUNFIRE 970 01:08:13,960 --> 01:08:16,120 In Beirut's Christian stronghold, 971 01:08:16,120 --> 01:08:21,080 Phalangist militiamen poured fire on neighbouring areas 972 01:08:21,080 --> 01:08:23,160 held by Muslim leftists 973 01:08:23,160 --> 01:08:26,920 and allies from the more extreme Palestinian guerrilla group. 974 01:08:26,920 --> 01:08:29,240 Every day you had a twist in the Lebanon. 975 01:08:29,240 --> 01:08:34,080 There is always something ghastly and new to kind of look at. 976 01:08:34,080 --> 01:08:37,680 I did this photograph of all these Christians, 977 01:08:37,680 --> 01:08:40,960 all proudly showing their manly side to them. 978 01:08:41,960 --> 01:08:46,040 And the audacity was that they were wearing Christian crosses 979 01:08:46,040 --> 01:08:48,680 and, you know, you think... 980 01:08:48,680 --> 01:08:52,160 you expect more from Christianity 981 01:08:52,160 --> 01:08:55,440 if you're displaying it in such a way than some of the terrible things 982 01:08:55,440 --> 01:08:58,560 that they did in the name of Christianity. 983 01:08:58,560 --> 01:09:02,240 On the political front, the situation still appears to be stalemate. 984 01:09:02,240 --> 01:09:05,200 Efforts to implement a ceasefire clearly having failed 985 01:09:05,200 --> 01:09:08,520 and parliament's attempts to hold a session... 986 01:09:08,520 --> 01:09:12,760 The Palestinian areas, the kind of east side of Beirut, 987 01:09:12,760 --> 01:09:16,080 right inside the Christian heartland. 988 01:09:17,520 --> 01:09:23,080 And it was just, it was murder from the word go. 989 01:09:23,080 --> 01:09:25,080 MUSIC 990 01:09:29,600 --> 01:09:33,000 They started, you know, collecting prisoners. 991 01:09:33,000 --> 01:09:34,960 It all happened so quickly. 992 01:09:36,800 --> 01:09:40,400 I went to a house where I could hear a lot of women and children screaming. 993 01:09:40,400 --> 01:09:42,760 A Christian was bringing the women and children down 994 01:09:42,760 --> 01:09:47,400 the side of this stairwell and I could see two Palestinian young men 995 01:09:47,400 --> 01:09:51,800 with their hands up, in the left-hand side of the stairwell. 996 01:09:53,880 --> 01:09:57,440 The moment the women went out of the house, 997 01:09:57,440 --> 01:10:00,960 the man next to me, and I was very close, you know, 998 01:10:00,960 --> 01:10:04,880 very close, started opening up and killing these people in cold blood, immediately. 999 01:10:04,880 --> 01:10:08,360 And they went down in a hail of bullets and blood, all up the wall. 1000 01:10:10,120 --> 01:10:13,760 And I went round the back of the stairwell, another stairwell, 1001 01:10:13,760 --> 01:10:16,840 and try to get a grip of myself, cos I was so shocked. 1002 01:10:16,840 --> 01:10:18,840 I couldn't believe what I had just seen. 1003 01:10:19,840 --> 01:10:21,640 I came out of the building 1004 01:10:21,640 --> 01:10:24,880 and there was another Christian gunman who had the women and children 1005 01:10:24,880 --> 01:10:27,480 and he said, "By the way, if I see you taking any pictures, 1006 01:10:27,480 --> 01:10:30,320 "I am going to kill you myself. Get out of here." 1007 01:10:33,360 --> 01:10:35,280 Everywhere I went that day, 1008 01:10:35,280 --> 01:10:38,800 I could see another person being murdered in front of me. 1009 01:10:38,800 --> 01:10:42,520 Of course, what I did eventually was get the picture of the man 1010 01:10:42,520 --> 01:10:45,760 playing the lute over the dead Palestinian girl's body. 1011 01:10:49,720 --> 01:10:53,480 They were so angry about it when it was published that they said 1012 01:10:53,480 --> 01:10:57,400 if they ever caught the man who took the picture, they would kill him. 1013 01:11:02,240 --> 01:11:04,160 In a way, it was almost an honour 1014 01:11:04,160 --> 01:11:06,840 that they wanted to kill me for taking the picture. 1015 01:11:11,080 --> 01:11:13,760 The 26-storey Holiday Inn is burning. 1016 01:11:13,760 --> 01:11:16,680 The third of a trio of five-star hotels 1017 01:11:16,680 --> 01:11:18,600 to be caught in the firing line. 1018 01:11:18,600 --> 01:11:20,960 This is the courtyard of the Hilton Hotel 1019 01:11:20,960 --> 01:11:24,680 and it was here that the fighting took place all last night. 1020 01:11:24,680 --> 01:11:31,480 When the Islamics overwhelmed part of the Christian area where I was, 1021 01:11:31,480 --> 01:11:36,120 they were actually ensconced in the Hilton Hotel and when they got in, 1022 01:11:36,120 --> 01:11:38,280 the Christians that they'd captured in there, 1023 01:11:38,280 --> 01:11:41,480 they took them to the top floor and they mutilated them 1024 01:11:41,480 --> 01:11:46,320 in a manly sense, by cutting off part of them, and they threw them, 1025 01:11:46,320 --> 01:11:48,720 alive, off the top of the building. 1026 01:11:50,440 --> 01:11:53,360 When it gets down to that kind of hatred, 1027 01:11:53,360 --> 01:11:56,040 it becomes a form of insanity. 1028 01:11:56,040 --> 01:12:01,200 It goes beyond your understanding of anything. Anything. 1029 01:12:09,400 --> 01:12:13,160 I don't know how he did it. He had a very sensitive conscience. 1030 01:12:13,160 --> 01:12:16,480 I would often call him "the conscience with a camera". 1031 01:12:16,480 --> 01:12:21,000 He had a very sensitive feel for other people's suffering, 1032 01:12:21,000 --> 01:12:25,080 which also gave him the impetus to feel, 1033 01:12:25,080 --> 01:12:29,040 "I can make people wake up to what is really going on here". 1034 01:12:29,040 --> 01:12:32,240 So the sensitivity which might have made him 1035 01:12:32,240 --> 01:12:37,400 recoil from the images was allied to this conscience of his which says, 1036 01:12:37,400 --> 01:12:41,560 "I've got to get this story. It can only be told by photographs." 1037 01:12:41,560 --> 01:12:47,400 His journalism, which is best when that cold eye of his, 1038 01:12:47,400 --> 01:12:52,400 if you like, was informed by the warmth of his empathy, 1039 01:12:52,400 --> 01:12:57,200 and by the text, which amplified the image which you could see. 1040 01:12:57,200 --> 01:13:00,960 It's an awful question to ask you, but do you think the images you take 1041 01:13:00,960 --> 01:13:04,920 of horror, of war, actually make anybody change their mind about it? 1042 01:13:04,920 --> 01:13:07,240 Actually, to be honest, I don't think they have. 1043 01:13:07,240 --> 01:13:09,440 I've been photographing war for about 16 years 1044 01:13:09,440 --> 01:13:11,680 and I've got very disillusioned. 1045 01:13:11,680 --> 01:13:14,240 And I've just had an exhibition 1046 01:13:14,240 --> 01:13:17,680 and the exhibition was mostly attended by very young people 1047 01:13:17,680 --> 01:13:20,920 and judging by the letters that I have received, which were many, 1048 01:13:20,920 --> 01:13:23,720 the people who wrote to me were very young people 1049 01:13:23,720 --> 01:13:25,920 and they are the people who care about war. 1050 01:13:25,920 --> 01:13:27,880 I think the rest of us, the middle-aged, 1051 01:13:27,880 --> 01:13:32,160 I hate to say this, people, they've had war and they've had enough of it. 1052 01:13:32,160 --> 01:13:35,000 I think they are sick about hearing about it now. 1053 01:13:35,000 --> 01:13:37,400 They think there is no solution, but the young people, 1054 01:13:37,400 --> 01:13:39,360 who are tomorrow's people, 1055 01:13:39,360 --> 01:13:42,360 they are more interested about trying to do something about it. 1056 01:13:42,360 --> 01:13:45,080 They feel ashamed of it and can't understand it. 1057 01:13:45,080 --> 01:13:48,160 I mean, why don't you settle for the easy life and earn 500 quid 1058 01:13:48,160 --> 01:13:51,000 a day taking pictures of ladies wearing bras and things? 1059 01:13:51,000 --> 01:13:55,120 - Or not wearing bras? - I would probably get a heart attack. 1060 01:13:55,120 --> 01:13:57,160 LAUGHTER 1061 01:13:58,360 --> 01:14:00,880 Did you like this one? The sulky lover? 1062 01:14:02,040 --> 01:14:04,480 You would be if you had a face like that against you. 1063 01:14:04,480 --> 01:14:06,480 THEY LAUGH 1064 01:14:09,040 --> 01:14:13,040 This is one of my favourite pictures. I don't have many favourites. 1065 01:14:13,040 --> 01:14:16,160 It's a classic example of intrusion, of course, 1066 01:14:16,160 --> 01:14:19,920 but it's just showing the English. 1067 01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:22,200 The deckchairs says it all, doesn't it? 1068 01:14:22,200 --> 01:14:25,200 One thing about England, you can guarantee to find 1069 01:14:25,200 --> 01:14:28,320 all kinds of kind of crazy people in the summer. 1070 01:14:30,600 --> 01:14:34,000 There's not, I don't think there is a country quite like this country 1071 01:14:34,000 --> 01:14:37,080 for the diversities of people's manifestations. 1072 01:14:37,080 --> 01:14:38,960 You know, eccentrics. 1073 01:14:38,960 --> 01:14:41,800 You can get them by the bus-load here in England. I love it. 1074 01:14:41,800 --> 01:14:43,800 MUSIC: "This Is England" by The Clash 1075 01:14:43,800 --> 01:14:47,880 # I hear a gang fire on a human factory farm 1076 01:14:47,880 --> 01:14:51,320 # Are they howling out or doing somebody harm? 1077 01:14:54,360 --> 01:14:58,680 # On a catwalk jungle somebody grabbed my arm 1078 01:15:00,920 --> 01:15:04,800 # A voice spoke so cold, it matched the weapon in her palm 1079 01:15:07,360 --> 01:15:09,960 # This is England 1080 01:15:09,960 --> 01:15:12,640 # This knife of Sheffield steel 1081 01:15:12,640 --> 01:15:15,480 # This is England 1082 01:15:15,480 --> 01:15:18,520 # This is how we feel 1083 01:15:34,000 --> 01:15:38,360 # This is England... # 1084 01:15:59,600 --> 01:16:02,400 When the print unions sabotaged the Sunday Times, 1085 01:16:02,400 --> 01:16:04,640 they basically killed the paper. 1086 01:16:04,640 --> 01:16:07,800 The Thomson Organisation said, "We can't go on like this. 1087 01:16:07,800 --> 01:16:12,560 "We can't have the paper wrecked not only physically but economically." 1088 01:16:12,560 --> 01:16:15,000 So they put the paper up for sale. 1089 01:16:17,160 --> 01:16:19,720 And they had a perception, a judgement, 1090 01:16:19,720 --> 01:16:24,080 that Rupert Murdoch, with his history of being pretty tough, 1091 01:16:24,080 --> 01:16:27,280 would be better able to control the print unions. 1092 01:16:28,680 --> 01:16:32,000 And in some respects, that was a fair judgement. 1093 01:16:32,000 --> 01:16:34,360 You've had enough photographs. I think we really... 1094 01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:36,720 - And with Mr Evans. - Mr Evans. 1095 01:16:36,720 --> 01:16:41,920 And though he made promises about the papers would maintain 1096 01:16:41,920 --> 01:16:44,800 their independence, he did not keep them. 1097 01:16:44,800 --> 01:16:50,480 And this, of course, was very, very bad news for British journalism 1098 01:16:50,480 --> 01:16:54,680 but it was also bad news, individually, for Don McCullin. 1099 01:16:54,680 --> 01:16:56,760 When Murdoch took over the Sunday Times 1100 01:16:56,760 --> 01:16:59,360 and Harold Evans went over to the Times newspaper, 1101 01:16:59,360 --> 01:17:03,840 we all felt that, you know, we were looking at the beginning of the end. 1102 01:17:03,840 --> 01:17:07,880 And I had had 18 fantastic years there. 1103 01:17:07,880 --> 01:17:12,720 The precious independence that he'd had and the ability to go 1104 01:17:12,720 --> 01:17:16,480 and tell an unvarnished truth through the medium of film 1105 01:17:16,480 --> 01:17:20,200 was now at risk, and so it proved to be. 1106 01:17:26,800 --> 01:17:29,280 MUSIC 1107 01:17:43,880 --> 01:17:46,920 The Falklands War suddenly appeared on the horizon and I thought, 1108 01:17:46,920 --> 01:17:51,880 "I want to be in on this, because for the first time in my life, 1109 01:17:51,880 --> 01:17:55,520 "I'm going to be in a big, international war with British soldiers." 1110 01:17:55,520 --> 01:17:58,160 You know, I thought I was the natural person 1111 01:17:58,160 --> 01:18:00,640 and to my astonishment, I was barred. 1112 01:18:00,640 --> 01:18:03,240 It didn't happen. 1113 01:18:03,240 --> 01:18:08,400 I was left behind and I was utterly miserable and devastated. 1114 01:18:10,640 --> 01:18:14,200 It was an appalling decision to keep Don McCullin off the boat, 1115 01:18:14,200 --> 01:18:17,040 creating the excuse that boat was full. 1116 01:18:19,280 --> 01:18:23,600 It seemed to be saying, "Your photography is so honest, 1117 01:18:23,600 --> 01:18:27,880 "so searing, so implicit with meaning, we can't take the risk 1118 01:18:27,880 --> 01:18:31,720 "of you accessing freedom of expression." 1119 01:18:31,720 --> 01:18:34,240 I thought it was the most appalling decision 1120 01:18:34,240 --> 01:18:37,040 and its effect on him was to seem to say, 1121 01:18:37,040 --> 01:18:40,680 "You've spent your life documenting things 1122 01:18:40,680 --> 01:18:43,480 "we don't think you should ever have documented," 1123 01:18:43,480 --> 01:18:48,200 which, of course, was saying, "Why have you bothered? 1124 01:18:48,200 --> 01:18:52,120 "Why have you bothered to risk your life to try and tell the truth?" 1125 01:18:56,080 --> 01:18:59,600 That's the reason I went back to Lebanon, 1126 01:18:59,600 --> 01:19:01,680 because I didn't go to the Falklands. 1127 01:19:01,680 --> 01:19:04,480 The Lebanon War was erupting at the same time. 1128 01:19:04,480 --> 01:19:07,000 Cos, you know, I can always go somewhere else. 1129 01:19:07,000 --> 01:19:09,760 If I couldn't go to this war, I could go to another war, you know. 1130 01:19:09,760 --> 01:19:14,520 Cos I was suffering from what you become, a war junkie, really. 1131 01:19:14,520 --> 01:19:16,920 I was suffering from that problem, you know. 1132 01:19:16,920 --> 01:19:22,360 The massacres were carried out by an elite special security formation 1133 01:19:22,360 --> 01:19:25,360 of the Lebanese Christian Phalange. 1134 01:19:25,360 --> 01:19:28,000 The operation was, at all stages, 1135 01:19:28,000 --> 01:19:31,920 under direct control of senior Phalange commanders. 1136 01:19:31,920 --> 01:19:34,680 During that early stage of the massacre at Shatila Camp, 1137 01:19:34,680 --> 01:19:40,200 the Israeli forces fired a constant barrage of flares 1138 01:19:40,200 --> 01:19:43,160 to light up the camp for the Phalange forces. 1139 01:19:44,400 --> 01:19:46,440 CLASSICAL MUSIC 1140 01:20:43,440 --> 01:20:45,800 One morning in the hotel, very early, 1141 01:20:45,800 --> 01:20:49,880 I had a call from someone saying, "Are you Mr McCullin?" I said yes. 1142 01:20:49,880 --> 01:20:52,960 They said, "Will you come down to the lobby? 1143 01:20:52,960 --> 01:20:56,600 "We want to take you to the hospital at Sabra and Shatila." 1144 01:20:58,280 --> 01:21:01,320 They said, "About 21 people have been killed in this hospital, 1145 01:21:01,320 --> 01:21:03,080 "but we are not interested in that. 1146 01:21:03,080 --> 01:21:07,440 "We want to show you the worst aspect of what has happened here today." 1147 01:21:07,440 --> 01:21:10,560 They took me upstairs to the children's department 1148 01:21:10,560 --> 01:21:13,840 of the insane side of the hospital 1149 01:21:13,840 --> 01:21:16,880 and to my astonishment, there was one nurse who had stayed 1150 01:21:16,880 --> 01:21:20,360 for five days during this shelling and the others had fled the hospital. 1151 01:21:25,440 --> 01:21:28,080 And she showed me around and I couldn't believe 1152 01:21:28,080 --> 01:21:30,000 what I was looking at. 1153 01:21:30,000 --> 01:21:33,120 She said, "We've had to tie the children to the beds," 1154 01:21:33,120 --> 01:21:35,880 she said, "because we couldn't cope. 1155 01:21:35,880 --> 01:21:38,280 "They would have got away and been injured." 1156 01:21:38,280 --> 01:21:40,720 And there were children tied to the beds, 1157 01:21:40,720 --> 01:21:43,920 covered in flies, in a heat you wouldn't understand. 1158 01:21:45,040 --> 01:21:48,520 So these children were lying in buckets of their own filth, 1159 01:21:48,520 --> 01:21:50,920 starving hungry, dying of thirst. 1160 01:21:52,400 --> 01:21:54,440 MUSIC 1161 01:22:06,280 --> 01:22:09,360 And she said, "There is a room with more children. 1162 01:22:09,360 --> 01:22:13,600 "I've had to lock them in the room and they are blind and insane," 1163 01:22:13,600 --> 01:22:17,000 and she said, "They're only two years old, some of them." 1164 01:22:17,000 --> 01:22:19,160 And she opened the door of this room 1165 01:22:19,160 --> 01:22:23,240 and the heat that came out of it, you could've roasted a chicken in it. 1166 01:22:23,240 --> 01:22:26,920 And out swam, in their own filth and mess, 1167 01:22:26,920 --> 01:22:29,920 they were like blind rats, these children. 1168 01:22:32,080 --> 01:22:35,640 I don't think I was ever more ashamed of humanity. 1169 01:22:35,640 --> 01:22:40,840 I thought, "If this is what people can do in the name of, you know, 1170 01:22:40,840 --> 01:22:43,920 "Christianity or whatever, you know..." 1171 01:22:43,920 --> 01:22:46,760 Because the war was being conducted against the Christians, 1172 01:22:46,760 --> 01:22:51,360 or the Christians were fighting back and the Jews were shelling, 1173 01:22:51,360 --> 01:22:55,320 I mean, the whole thing was about religious madness. 1174 01:22:55,320 --> 01:22:57,560 Who was paying the price? 1175 01:22:57,560 --> 01:23:02,760 I wandered away. I was in deep shock and I thought, "I'm confused, here. 1176 01:23:02,760 --> 01:23:09,360 "Why am I here? What has this got to do with my original concept of being a photographer?" 1177 01:23:12,680 --> 01:23:15,560 And I wandered into another room just to get away 1178 01:23:15,560 --> 01:23:18,320 from all this horrible, horrible stuff. 1179 01:23:18,320 --> 01:23:20,760 And I saw a child sitting, 1180 01:23:20,760 --> 01:23:24,920 playing with bits of debris as if he had Lego. 1181 01:23:29,400 --> 01:23:32,120 I think it was a day of reckoning for me, 1182 01:23:32,120 --> 01:23:35,800 because I don't think I could have ever touched on more tragedy, 1183 01:23:35,800 --> 01:23:38,880 all under one roof, than what I saw at that hospital that day. 1184 01:23:38,880 --> 01:23:40,960 I've never forgotten it. 1185 01:23:47,080 --> 01:23:50,760 The sad thing about these days that I never forget 1186 01:23:50,760 --> 01:23:54,040 is that they come back, on a regular basis, 1187 01:23:54,040 --> 01:23:57,840 as fresh as it was happening today, to haunt me. 1188 01:24:08,120 --> 01:24:11,200 There is nothing so powerful as reporting. 1189 01:24:11,200 --> 01:24:15,440 The government can't find out the things that reporters can. 1190 01:24:15,440 --> 01:24:18,280 Certainly, many governments wish to suppress 1191 01:24:18,280 --> 01:24:22,800 what can be found out, foreign governments and sometimes our own. 1192 01:24:22,800 --> 01:24:24,920 So this is a very, 1193 01:24:24,920 --> 01:24:28,840 very important quality of Don's impulses, 1194 01:24:28,840 --> 01:24:32,200 which is the passion to report what is happening 1195 01:24:32,200 --> 01:24:35,400 and insofar as that has diminished today, 1196 01:24:35,400 --> 01:24:37,160 we've lost a huge amount 1197 01:24:37,160 --> 01:24:40,000 and I think there is still a tremendous appetite 1198 01:24:40,000 --> 01:24:43,680 for really good photojournalism, really good reporting. 1199 01:24:44,680 --> 01:24:47,080 Mr Rupert Murdoch, on budget day, 1200 01:24:47,080 --> 01:24:51,680 asked me to resign as Editor of the Times. I refused. 1201 01:24:52,680 --> 01:24:54,800 At no time have the independent 1202 01:24:54,800 --> 01:24:57,840 national directors sought my resignation. 1203 01:25:00,120 --> 01:25:03,240 But in the circumstances, the differences between me 1204 01:25:03,240 --> 01:25:05,640 and Mr Murdoch should not be prolonged. 1205 01:25:06,960 --> 01:25:11,080 I am therefore resigning tonight as the Editor of the Times. 1206 01:25:11,080 --> 01:25:15,080 The reason I got pushed out of the Sunday Times was simple, actually. 1207 01:25:15,080 --> 01:25:16,840 They had brought a new editor in. 1208 01:25:16,840 --> 01:25:19,280 A man called Andrew Neil, who was very ambitious, 1209 01:25:19,280 --> 01:25:22,320 and quite, you know, he knew what he wanted. 1210 01:25:22,320 --> 01:25:26,720 Most new editors like to kick off with a new bunch of people 1211 01:25:26,720 --> 01:25:30,640 under them, but he did say that there would be no more 1212 01:25:30,640 --> 01:25:33,800 wars in the magazine and in fact, it would be a magazine 1213 01:25:33,800 --> 01:25:38,400 based on life and leisure, you know, to attract the ads. 1214 01:25:38,400 --> 01:25:42,400 So I was one of the first casualties, 1215 01:25:42,400 --> 01:25:45,720 because when I went and photographed wars and Africa 1216 01:25:45,720 --> 01:25:47,760 and dying and starving children, 1217 01:25:47,760 --> 01:25:52,160 I was going to make sure that I got the strongest images. 1218 01:25:52,160 --> 01:25:54,800 They didn't always sit well in a magazine 1219 01:25:54,800 --> 01:25:58,680 that was trying to sell you, you know, cars and luxury. 1220 01:25:58,680 --> 01:26:01,920 So I was definitely on the way out by that stage. 1221 01:26:30,240 --> 01:26:32,680 I asked him about the occasion he was invited to 1222 01:26:32,680 --> 01:26:36,440 an execution in Saigon and as I recall, 1223 01:26:36,440 --> 01:26:39,400 he went to the prison where the execution was going to take place 1224 01:26:39,400 --> 01:26:43,040 and turned back and refused to take the photograph. 1225 01:26:43,040 --> 01:26:47,080 It was because of his really powerful humanitarian impulses, 1226 01:26:47,080 --> 01:26:51,240 he didn't want to legitimise murder in any way. 1227 01:26:51,240 --> 01:26:55,440 Since, actually, his entire canon of photography 1228 01:26:55,440 --> 01:26:58,800 is to delegitimise violence and say, 1229 01:26:58,800 --> 01:27:02,480 "Look, these are the consequences of your political decision. 1230 01:27:02,480 --> 01:27:05,120 "These are the consequences of your greed. 1231 01:27:05,120 --> 01:27:08,040 "These are the consequences of your carelessness. 1232 01:27:08,040 --> 01:27:10,080 "Look on these and think again." 1233 01:27:10,080 --> 01:27:15,040 I think his entire impulse, a humanitarian photographer 1234 01:27:15,040 --> 01:27:20,320 with tremendous technical skill, amounting to genius, in my view. 1235 01:27:22,000 --> 01:27:24,160 MUSIC 1236 01:27:27,400 --> 01:27:29,560 I'm nearly 75 years of age now. 1237 01:27:29,560 --> 01:27:33,080 I still have some energy left, not a lot, 1238 01:27:33,080 --> 01:27:37,960 but I'm going to spend the rest of my life trying to eradicate, 1239 01:27:37,960 --> 01:27:40,240 you know, the things we've been talking about. 1240 01:27:40,240 --> 01:27:42,920 I'm just going to photograph the landscape, 1241 01:27:42,920 --> 01:27:46,440 and the English landscape, to me, is my heaven. 1242 01:27:46,440 --> 01:27:48,480 My form of heaven. 1243 01:27:50,760 --> 01:27:54,240 The one thing that upsets me about it is, like all other things, 1244 01:27:54,240 --> 01:27:57,520 there is always a threat surrounding the things you love. 1245 01:27:57,520 --> 01:28:00,960 When I hear a chainsaw in the distance, you know, 1246 01:28:00,960 --> 01:28:02,960 I think a tree is dying. 1247 01:28:02,960 --> 01:28:05,920 When I hear shooting, when there is pheasant shooting, 1248 01:28:05,920 --> 01:28:08,640 I think there's going to be some blood somewhere. 1249 01:28:08,640 --> 01:28:11,200 The sound of gunfire immediately switches on 1250 01:28:11,200 --> 01:28:14,720 another part of my nervous system. 1251 01:28:18,320 --> 01:28:22,640 So I feel, as much as you try to run away from these things, 1252 01:28:22,640 --> 01:28:25,760 someone always presses a button and says, you know, 1253 01:28:25,760 --> 01:28:29,880 "Here is a reminder of, you know, what you used to do." 1254 01:31:14,080 --> 01:31:16,120 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd110224

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