“Photography has given me a life. The very least I could do was to try and articulate these stories with as much compassion and clarity as they deserve, with as loud a voice as I could muster. Anything less would be mercenary.”
~ Don McCullin
Don, in his early reportage work, produced many powerful industrial landscapes. When I look at this one I feel like I am reading an early D.H. Lawrence novel set in the industrial North. This is as far removed from the Swinging London 60’s as could be, the National divide. He captures the bleak, impoverished and desolate north of England through this haunting image of a steel worker on his early morning walk to the factory where he earns his living.Don imbues it with such respect and empathy for this man’s hard life which pervades his whole body of work and is reflective of his character as a special human being and photographer.
