To coincide with the major retrospective at Tate Britain, Hamiltons will be celebrating Sir Don McCullin’s lifetime achievement by exhibiting rare and unseen vintage prints dating back to the 1950s. Selected from the photographer’s personal archive, they were made shortly after the photographs were first taken on assignments around the world. Intimate and physically modest, the prints provide access to events witnessed and recorded by a photojournalist working on the frontline of multiple, international flashpoints from Vietnam to Cyprus. Largely produced for a photo editor or agency in a pre-digital age, these historic prints have been visibly put to work and bear the physical marks of their use. In these pictures McCullin shares the telling details of a human face or the gestures of a hand. As he earns his subjects’ trust, he communicates their crisis. To comprehend each remarkable scene, the viewer is pulled in tight as if we are standing beside McCullin in proximity to an anxious soldier, a pointed gun or a grieving wife.
Don McCullin
PROXIMITY
30 January – 24 April 2019
Hamiltons
13 Carlos Place
W1K 2EU London
www.hamiltonsgallery.com
Beatles, Vintage gelatin silver print © Don McCullin
Cyprus, Vintage gelatin silver print © Don McCullin
