Shaped by War

Starred review from March 15, 2011

Growing up in London during the Blitz was a nightmarish experience that proved ideal training for award-winning photographer McCullin, who spent his career crossing the globe traveling from war to war. In this stellar volume he recounts falling aimlessly into photography after being assigned to a photographic unit in the British army. Soon after his service discharge in the mid-1950s, he found himself photographing combat in Cyprus, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Six-Day War, early action in Vietnam, and, later, El Salvador. He also captured the horrors of the Biafra famine--wherever terrible things were happening, he went. The numerous monochrome pictures are wonderful enough, and McCullin's text is heavy with the emotion of the horrors he witnessed. He also reveals the guilt he felt at exploiting others at their worst moments to earn his living. But his trade almost cost him his life; he was wounded once and was saved from further harm by his Nikon F, which stopped an AK round that might have killed him (there's a great image of the shattered prism housing!). VERDICT Remarkable photographs matched by an emotional text make this a standout volume for photography fans.--Mike Rogers, Library Journal

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2011
British photojournalist McCullins best-known images, which are included in this retrospective of his entire career, stem from wars of the 1960s and 1970s in the Congo, Cyprus, Vietnam, and Lebanon. A companion to a contemporary exhibit staged by Britains Imperial War Museum, the tome contains text that somewhat overlaps with McCullins autobiography (Unreasonable Behavior, 1992), but there are far more photographs included here. Word and picture initially explain how McCullin began, as a film developer in the Royal Air Force. Returned to civilian life in the late 1950s, he broke into photojournalism with street scenes of London and eventually was hired by the prestigious London Sunday Times, for which he took a picture that has assumed iconic status in Vietnam War imagery, in which a battle-weary U.S. Marine looks through the camera with a thousand-yard stare. McCullin describes the circumstances of its composition, as he does those of most photos reproduced here, typically reflecting on his feelings about covering combat and the risks he incurred. A skillful graphic documentary of McCullins fine war photography.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)