Homage

Before I'd even left the Don McCullin exhibition at Tate Modern I'd switched my camera onto mono, high contrast. 


I already knew he was an extraordinary photographer - I grew up with the colour supplements of the 60s and 70s and I've seen lots of his pictures, I used to cut them out and blu-tack them onto my walls - but to see all this together...

The exhibition opens with a quote: 'Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.'

Several brought me to tears. He has seen appalling things, borne witness and, somehow, survived. 
 

Of course I'm not Don McCullin, not anything close, and when I got home I deleted almost every one of my mono, high-contrast pictures. No feeling.