8 h. ago ‘It’s been a cesspit, really, my life’: war photographer Don McCullin on 19 of his greatest pictures

At 90, McCullin has spent seven decades recording conflict and tragedy – while escaping snipers, mortar fire and capture. He reflects on pain, pride and regretWar 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.McCullin is proud of escaping the extreme poverty he was born into, and the interesting and adventurous life he has lived, but he says the accolades – including a knighthood in 2017 – make him uneasy. “I feel as if I’ve been over-rewarded, and I definitely feel uncomfortable about that, because it’s been at the expense of other people’s lives.” But he has been the witness to atrocity,...

Events

2 w. ago Louder than Bombs: Joachim Trier’s thorniest film might be his best

The director of Sentimental Value and The Worst Person in the World made his English-language debut with this divisive family drama in 2015. It’s worth watching for Isabelle Huppert aloneGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailLong before Joachim Trier made the Oscar-winning The Worst Person in the World and this year’s festival megahit Sentimental Value, there was 2015’s Louder than Bombs: a far stranger, slipperier film worth watching for Isabelle Huppert’s spectral turn alone. She plays a character also called Isabelle, a renowned war photographer whose secrets haunt her family three years after her sudden death.Her teenage son Conrad (Devin Druid) still daydreams in class about the car crash that claimed her life, imagining her final, panicked moments. His brother Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) and father Gene (Gabriel Byrne) know (and conceal) the truth: that her fateful, split-second swerve was an act of suicide. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago War photographer abducted in Syria reveals how he was betrayed by militants he was filming and 'sold as a hostage'

War photojournalist Jonathan Alpeyrie recalls how he was once betrayed by a group of militants he was filming in Syria and 'sold as a hostage'.

Events

2 w. ago ‘Somerset saved my sanity’: Don McCullin at 90 – in pictures

Don McCullin spent decades photographing war and carnage across the globe – then he retrained his lens on the Somerset countryside. As he turns 90, a new book celebrates his gorgeous still lifes and landscapes Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Audrey Hepburn to Salvador Dalí: Cecil Beaton’s bright young things – in pictures

A new exhibition, featuring images of Hollywood stars and war photography, shows why the ‘King of Vogue’ was one of the visionary forces of the British 20th century Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago You don't think it will happen to you: a deep friendship forged behind Ukraine's frontline

When the war breaks out in Ukraine, Alisa is thrown into a life she wasn't expecting. Working as a translator for foreign journalists she meets British war photographer Anastasia, who chooses not to rush towards the front, instead observing quiet moments of everyday resilience - birthdays, picnics, weddings. A unique friendship forms as the two women strive to collapse the emotional distance between “us” and “them”. Their bond deepens as war wounds them both —transforming this into a poetic meditation on closeness, distance, and what happens when war stops being a story about others. Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago You don't think it will happen to you: a deep friendship forged on Ukraine's frontline

When the war breaks out in Ukraine, Alisa is thrown into a life she wasn't expecting. Working as a translator for foreign journalists she meets British war photographer Anastasia, who chooses not to rush towards the front, instead observing quiet moments of everyday resilience - birthdays, picnics, weddings. A unique friendship forms as the two women strive to collapse the emotional distance between “us” and “them”. Their bond deepens as war wounds them both —transforming this into a poetic meditation on closeness, distance, and what happens when war stops being a story about others. Continue reading...

Politics

4 w. ago Lee Miller review – a dazzling, daring career from war photographer to surrealist pioneer via Hitler’s bathtub

Tate Britain, LondonAn overdue showcase of Miller’s remarkable work follows its many frenzied twists – from her unrecognised work with Man Ray to unseen gems of the Egyptian desert and unflinching glimpses of DachauUnapologetically ambitious and voraciously inventive, this vast new Lee Miller exhibition is the most comprehensive display of the late American photographer’s work ever held in the UK. It’s an overdue account of a remarkable artist whose dazzling, daring career had more than a few twists: from Vogue cover girl to Vogue photographer; from surrealists’ muse to pioneer of the movement; from commercial portraitist to war photographer.Some of Miller’s fabled work is here, including her famous self-portrait in Hitler’s bathtub, her boots – dirtied with mud from Dachau concentration camp – strewn symbolically on the floor. The exhibition builds a sense of the dizzying, sometimes frenzied energy of Miller, who could photograph fashionable hats as well as Nazis who died by suicid...

Events

4 w. ago ‘Out on a damn limb’: the daredevil photography of Lee Miller – in pictures

A fearless war photographer, a peerless surrealist, a chronicler of Egypt and Syria a new exhibition at Tate Britain explores how Lee Miller became one of the most urgent voices of 20th-century art Continue reading...

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