Don McCullin La Pace Impossibile

Don McCullin is among our era's greatest photographers, eyewitness to the "hearts of darkness" of wars, humanitarian tragedies, and social dramas that have marked the second half of the cruel century we have left behind. His images focus on dramatic framing, the expressiveness and powerful impact of close-ups, the movements of bodies silhouetted in space, and strong chiaroscuro accentuated and dominated by his velvety blacks. But he is also the author of unforgettable landscapes, almost always photographed in winter, at dawn or dusk. In this publication the photographic testimonies McCullin gathered from the world's frontlines and humanitarian disasters pass before our eyes one after another : images of the Berlin Wall's construction; wars in Vietnam and Cambodia ; bloody conflicts in the Middle East ; and victims of famine in Biafra, cholera in Bangladesh and AIDS in Africa - to mention just a few. Then there are the merciless depictions McCullin made of his homeland, England, photographing the most contradictory "faces" of that society : gangs and teddy boys, the homeless and the unemployed, and the nobility attending the Ascot races. This monograph is completed by images from recent decades : still lifes like the votive altars he erects at home; views of the English countryside around his house; so-called "primitive peoples" in various parts of the world; and the ruins of Rome's glorious past, for which he developed a keen interest through his friendship with Bruce Chatwin.