- Venue
- C/O Gallery Berlin
- Location
- Germany
Don McCullin. The Impossible Peace
You would be daring in venturing the word “beautiful” in describing some of Don McCullin’s work, as the incomprehensibly large amount of pain and suffering documented in his work presents quite the juxtaposition, unless you were to imply sadism. It is a perception of beauty none the less; the careful composition used to display such calamity and the impeccable timing to capture each of these moments of despair and distress. It is the realness in these images which seems so often to be lost in today’s society.
The Impossible Peace is an exhibition that took place in the CO Gallery Berlin between the 12th of December 2009 and the 28th of February 2010. The gallery housed a collection of photographs by the infamous photojournalist, Don McCullin. McCullin’s work is generally concentrated around human catastrophe, including warfare, epidemic, poverty and famine though he has also been partial to photographing landscapes and popular culture as well.
The exhibition is a retrospective of McCullin’s work of 50 years, over 150 photographs taken between 1958 and 2008. The layout is spread across four rooms and upon entering the first room and glancing over the curator’s introduction to the exhibition, I’ll admit, I considered leaving. Why should I once again be forced to feel guilty for the comforts of everyday western civilisation? This, however, was only a first reaction and later I would come to think how much I would have regretted abandoning such a powerful display of work.
The photographs are moments captured of pain and suffering around the world, unlike anything we see in the media today. Seeing these images, and even with little knowledge to the majority of the events, I found myself brought to tears at the accumulated evidence of inhumane atrocity. With today’s current media coverage of international affairs, I find I have developed immunity to tragic news across the globe and events seem to have lost their impact.
“The exhibition was a rollercoaster of intense emotion,” said one visitor. “It took my heart places I didn’t know it could go.”
There is such a range in subject and expression, including a portrait of an Irish Civilian tormenting British troops during the Northern Ireland conflict, which manages a gesture of humour in a sombre collection of images, the Irishman throwing a large stick in front of a group of troops huddled around the side of a building, just to spook them.
The range continues as you move along a few images further, to view an image of a father holding his son, dead in his arms from disease due to the lack of proper healthcare, a byproduct of war. The father is surrounded by his community but is making direct eye contact with the camera, with the viewer, the expression on his face very calm and nearly empty. His eyes are almost screaming with power, with a dignified suffering and a radical hate, not at the camera or viewer but at the actuality of having to accept his surrounding circumstances.
“It is difficult to associate the word ‘dignity’ with conditions such as I photograph but dignity is what I try to show. I find it most in people who suffer the most; they seem to marshal the energy of dignity, because they will not surrender.” –a quote by Don McCullin printed on the wall above his photography, one of several written across the exhibition.
I found myself absorbed by one picture longer than the others, mainly because it supported this idea of realness, without the reworked perception of a media stand point. The image is called ‘A Lebanese Family Leaving the Martyr’s Cemetery’ (seen above). In a book I found later for research purposes called ‘Beirut a City in Crisis’ by Don McCullin, the caption for the image is ‘A Lebanese family leaving the Martyr’s Cemetery where all the heroes of the fighting are buried, after the death of their son’.
The image portrays a family, three men supporting an elderly and young woman walking towards the camera. You can only presume the relations but the only member showing apparent grief is what I would guess to be the mother of the son; her expression seems so disbelieving. The men all seem to be retaining any evident emotion at leaving the funeral of a loved one and in thinking this was what stopped me for longer to consider the image.
There is no guide or rule book to life’s hardships, though I imagine during a time of Warfare, where you’re freedom is at stake and your life is in a constant state of loss, it must be a harder to find a way to grieve, especially in front of a camera. This family continues to march forward because they cannot let their losses consume them and they cannot let their losses be in vain. They walk forward for the promise of an uncertain peace.
McCullin had little training as a photographer when he started, so it is an exceptional feat that he manages to present the world with such a beautiful collection of our own travesties, without blame, without bias but only with truth. The people in these photographs aren’t terrorists, soldiers or beggars, infidels, vandals or activists. They are people playing their part and the ‘Impossible Peace’ exhibition is a reminder of what we never seem to learn which is that pain is international and suffering is unbiased.
