#war-photography

#war-photography

It is not often that you get to see a war photographer at work. Certainly not one who more or less defines our idea of the profession as it exists today, is widely considered to be its greatest practitioner and has been dead for more than 70 years. But as part of its new retrospective, the Museum of the Liberation of Paris has produced a remarkable candid film of Robert Capa on the job.

War photographers are not meant to reach 90. Fate has had my life in its hands, says Don McCullin. Over his seven-decade career covering wars, famines and disasters McCullin has been captured, and escaped snipers, mortar fire and more. How does it feel to be a survivor? Uncomfortable, he says. No wonder he finds solace in the beautiful still lifes he creates in his shed, or in the images he composes in the countryside around his Somerset home.

Many children, their eyes wide with shock, cling to the arms of rescuers after explosions tear through their neighbourhoods. Some images are too horrific to show, with small bodies crushed beneath rubble, homes erased in an instant, and the innocence of youth replaced by trauma. These faces, once vibrant and full of life, grow thinner and paler, fading under the weight of hunger and loss.