McCullin

I cried tonight and still feel....I dunno, a bit empty. It was a film that did it. No ordinary film. A documentary about The Sunday Times photographer Don McCullin.

The end of the film summed it up. His services were no longer required when Andrew Neil took over as editor. McCullin's images were too real, too disturbing.....to be alongside advertisements that were trying to sell luxury cars and watches. McCullin's pictures were far more in the public interest than anything subsequently printed in a Murdoch newspaper.

Death, murder, cruelty, famine and poverty. Images that I've never seen anything like before. A face run over by a tank. The poor people nearly always suffered most. I shook. Tears rolled down my cheeks. So disturbing....but some very warm too, eyes showing humility but also fear.

McCullin came across as the type of human being I aspire to be. His camera is a tool for treating blindness; blindness and denial of a magnitude of horrors that afflict most of us. Warm, sincere and honest, not afraid of confronting humanity at its worst but dealing sufficiently with it to remain sane and still see the good in people.

I came out the cinema....I would say shell shocked but the film showed shell shock. I didn't have that. I came out the cinema to a Manchester Friday night. People leaving the theatre, drunks shouting, girls in short skirts and sparkly heels, camp gays dramatically mincing towards Canal Street, an old man looking sad in a doorway, a musician with an epic double bass strapped to his back. I felt alone, wondering what the human race is all about. I think too much.

Denial, ignoring or turning a blind eye! We all do those things but most of us are victims of those who perpetrate 'nothing's against us. A bit bullying here, a bit of unacceptable behaviour there, a red light, climate change, rape, pillage, drones! Is humanity imploding? It won't be the end of the world if it, but a new beginning. A fatalistic paradox of humanity.

Tomorrow someone will shoot me a warm smile, I'll feel the winter sunshine and I'll see a wee bird chirping in a tree. It's not such a bad world. I'll sleep well tonight knowing that I'm happier than those with power and privilege who try to sleep, thinking they've got impunity to the evil and damage they're capable of.