"One of the first photographs I ever took was The Guvnors, a picture of a gang of boys I went to school with. It was off-the-cuff, a Sunday in 1958. They said, 'Listen, why don't you go and get that camera, take a picture of us?' I belted up to the house, brought the camera down - but I didn't have a great deal of enthusiasm. They all had suits on, it was sunny. I took one frame and that negative is still great today."
"When they went on to become implicated in the murder of a policeman, The Observer asked to publish the image and suddenly I was a photographer - that picture was the first page of my working life, though I've always felt photography chose me. Not long afterwards, I was sitting in Café de Flore in Paris with my first wife and I looked over her shoulder and saw a newspaper picture of an East German soldier jumping over the wire into the West"
Don McCullin took his first notable photograph, The Guvnors, spontaneously in 1958; its later publication after the subjects became implicated in a crime launched his photographic career. A newspaper image seen in Paris of an East German soldier crossing into the West inspired him to go to Berlin and pursue documentary work. He describes having hungry eyes, a quest for information, and a feeling that photography chose him. He credits timely decisions and perceptive vision for his path. At age 90 he has a new show, A Desecrated Serenity, at Hauser & Wirth in New York, and feels gratitude tempered by discomfort about outliving others.
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