There are times when you realise that your life has been very easy, your troubles are really trivial and in the great shake of things not really worth worrying about. This is how the exhibition of Don McCullin's life and work at the Imperial War Museum North hits you.
The exhibition is more a theatrical stage rather than exhibition space. You walk through a maze of dimly lit passages ways, all the time surrounded by the images that made Don McCullin such a powerful and famous photographer and a continual loop of McCullin himself talking about his work in a very matter of fact manner. However, beyond the photography there is the small items that perhaps are as poignant; the telex from Lord Snowdon to McCullen when he was seriously injured in Cambodia; his light meter that must have seen some of the worst action any light meter may have experienced - just how do you take a meter reading which under fire?
Beyond the overpowering effect of the exhibition there were one or two problems with the exhibition - all associated with light - or lack of it. McCullin's world is very dark in presentation as well as its content. This makes experiencing the work more difficult in a dimly lit space. This leads to the next problem. Throughout the the exhibition there are illuminated advertising hoarding sized pictures that beam out in the gloom. These have a great visual effect and added to the atmosphere - however, they do make viewing the individual prints more difficult as they can be partly obscured by reflections of the hoardings on the glass cover of each print. One final point - McCullin's colour photographs are nowhere near as powerful as his black and white work. They have the same narrative subject matter but none of the punch - black and white is his medium and his mastery of it is superb.
All in all and great exhibition and well worth the trip to Salford to see it.
Simon Marchini LRPS
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk
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