Do You Ever Help Anybody?

I’ve been asked every question in the world when I’ve given talks, but the number one question that comes up all the time is: Do you ever help anybody? My answer is that although I don’t consider photographing helping, what else can I do? I’m not a qualified person; if I was I wouldn’t be there as a photographer, would I? I once carried a soldier on my back from the front. He had this horrible leg wound- a bullet went through both his legs. Another time I had crawled over to where a marine had fallen. All the muscle was hanging out off his bone. I put it back and bandaged it, and I helped drag him away. Now that’s not my job, but the trouble is one becomes a humanitarian. All of a sudden you put your cameras down and you become a human being, and you say, “I can’t photograph people dying without trying to do something."

Don McCullin was born in London, England in 1935. His first experience with photography was during his National Service in the Royal Air Force, after which he shot professionally for The Observer, who gave him his first assignment in a combat zone when they sent him to photograph the civil war in Cyprus in 1964. After covering many conflicts throughout the world he now lives in Somerset in rural England and photographs landscapes.