The walls of the Don McCullin’s retrospective exhibition are painted a solid grey and the carpet is off-white so that the viewer’s entire attention is on the photographs.
Ann Thomas, the curator of the exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), explained that even the colours have been chosen to emphasize McCullin’s work.
“We wanted to get across a very holistic picture of what Don McCullin had achieved as a photojournalist and as a photographer,” she said.
McCullin is not your typical 77-year-old father of five; he’s one of the world’s most renowned photojournalists. He’s also the first person to be honoured with a solo exhibit at the NGC.
McCullin has taken hundreds of photographs and created some of the most iconic images of war. He has been present to document everything from the building of the Berlin Wall to the Nigerian-Biafran War. These dark events from human history are reflected in McCullin’s signature black and white photos.
One of the few words adorning the walls of the exhibit is a quote by McCullin: “I want to create a voice for the people in those pictures. I want the voice to seduce people into actually hanging on a bit longer when they look at them, so they go away not with an intimidating memory but with a conscious obligation.”
The exhibit is organized so that McCullin’s earliest photographs are displayed first. As the viewer continues to walk through the exhibit, the photographs grow closer to the present, up until some of McCullin’s most recent pictures taken in 2012.
The collection of 120 photos, handpicked by McCullin and Thomas, depict a wide range of subjects, from homeless Irishmen to one of McCullin’s most recognized photographs: a starving Albino Biafran child, holding an empty corned beef tin during the Biafran famine.
Another McCullin quote was placed above a series of photos depicting poverty and mental illness in London.
“Stealing pictures of these people with a long lens was not my style. I wanted to be close to them, to feel their plight and to convey the emotion of contact with them. I wanted their trust and to become their voice.”
The gritty series of photographs is accompanied by a small paragraph that provides a brief narrative of the time period and context that the photograph was taken in.
“Photojournalists work with context, narrative, and story and we didn’t want to isolate these photos and make them look as if we were showing them for their formal elegance,” Thomas said. “We wanted to respect the picture-making aspect of it, but also that it came out of conflict.”
“Coming from a generation that was born after all these major conflicts, it’s interesting to see how the world was. I didn’t know about half of these events and it’s amazing that photography has the ability to convey history just as easily as a textbook,” said Tatheer Ali, a first-year public affairs and policy management student at Carleton who visited the exhibit.
The exhibition will run until April 14.
