Saratoga Springs residents help pay off delinquent school lunch accounts

Residents in one Utah County community have rallied to help contribute to school lunch accounts so students can eat at school without the embarrassment of overdue funds.

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Snow brings earliest opening at Powder Mountain in decades

Powder Mountain Ski Resort had its earliest opening in nearly a decade thanks to about 16 inches of snow that fell over a two-day period.

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Police officer involved in shooting in Ogden

Police are investigating an officer-involved shooting in Ogden Friday night.

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Utah governor: President Trump's treatment of Rep. Mia Love 'petty'

Gov. Gary Herbert criticized President Donald Trump Friday for being "petty" about Rep. Mia Love's narrow loss that came after she declined to embrace election help from the White House.

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TEDWomen: Vibrations offer new way to track elephants

A technique used to study earthquakes have been adapted to track elephants in the wild.

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Woman injured after Provo Canyon crash, officials say

A woman was injured after a Friday afternoon crash in Provo Canyon, authorities said.

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From Red Lopez to Ted Bundy: 4 of Utah's biggest crime mysteries

In late November and throughout December 105 years ago, Utah law officials engaged in one of the state's largest manhunts. It's one of several crime mysteries in Utah history.

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Space Odyssey helps launch first 8K TV channel

The classic film will be broadcast in super-high definition 8K on a new TV channel in Japan.

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Brexit: Minister resigns over Theresa May's 'naive' deal

Sam Gyimah says a row about the EU's Galileo sat-nav system shows any deal will be "EU first".

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Community rallies around family with 3 boys who each have rare form of muscular dystrophy

A community is rallying around the Honey family in American Fork to raise money to purchase a wheelchair accessible van for their three special needs sons.

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SaferVPN review: This newcomer is off to a good start

Report: More Utah kids going without health insurance; 1st nationwide increase in years

The number of uninsured children in Utah jumped more than 20 percent last year as part of a nationwide uptick that reversed course on years of improvement, according to a new report.

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Candlelight vigil to honor fallen Utah officer on Sunday

A vigil will be held Sunday for a South Salt Lake officer killed in the line of duty.

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Man found dead in St. George after being reported missing

A man who went missing Sunday in the St. George area has been found dead, police said Friday.

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Want to shop online? Best have a mobile signal

Banks are introducing passwords sent to your mobile phone, a problem if you don't have coverage.

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5 free days announced for national parks in 2019

In continuing the effort to get more people outdoors and into the national parks, the National Park Service announced Friday that entrance fees will be waived on five days in 2019.

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'I got paid less than my colleagues for doing the same work'

Resolution Foundation finds agency workers are paid £400 a year less than directly employed colleagues

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Is the shopping centre ready to check out?

They were once visions of the future, but are shopping centres now past their sell-by date?

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The Full Nerd ep. 76: Sapphire RX 590 Nitro+, misleading Optane PC ads, Black Friday hauls

Microsoft beats Apple for biggest market value

Microsoft has reclaimed the title of world's most valuable company, overtaking Apple.

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What 'The Front Runner' And Gary Hart Tell Us About Political Theater Today

Matt Bai and Jay Carson wrote the screenplay of a new drama about the swift 1987 downfall of the Democratic presidential candidate — an event Bai says has a "direct throughline" to President Trump.

(Image credit: Frank Masi/Sony Pictures)

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Best password managers: Reviews and buying advice

Officials seek man who allegedly assaulted motorist in road rage incident on I-15 on-ramp

Authorities said they are looking for any information to identify a man they say punched another motorist in the face and assaulted them with a weapon during a road rage incident on an I-15 on-ramp Wednesday evening.

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Herbert calls special legislative session on medical marijuana for Monday

Gov. Gary Herbert made it official Friday, issuing a call for a special session of the Utah Legislature on Monday to replace the medical marijuana ballot initiative just passed by voters.

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This week in games: Obsidian teases a game reveal, the FTC pledges to look into loot boxes

Man accused of stealing from people in casinos arrested in Sevier County

A Nevada man with a history of escaping custody was arrested in Redmond on a $500,000 warrant out of Las Vegas for failing to appear in court for sentencing.

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Facebook video leads police to arrest man in connection with Layton armed robbery

An 18-year-old man was arrested early Friday morning after police used a video he sent to a friend through Facebook to connect him with a Tuesday armed robbery of a Chevron gas station, according to a jail report.

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Manchester's House of Fraser store Kendal's saved from closure

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said it was "fantastic news for the city".

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17 Tips for Hiking with your Camera

When I go hiking I always carry my DSLR and sometimes other cameras like a compact camera, a GoPro or a drone. Since I was hiking a lot in the last years I made some experiences some good and some bad, something that works great and some things I tend to forget. To help you ...

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Fresh off 'marathon' Senate race, Jenny Wilson announces 'sprint' for Salt Lake County mayor's chair

Salt Lake County Councilwoman Jenny Wilson on Friday officially declared her bid to replace outgoing Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams, who is headed to Congress after his nail-biting race with Rep. Mia Love.

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26-30 railcard: 'I'll be £450 worse off because of delay'

The launch of the new 26-30 railcard has been delayed slightly, meaning some millennials will miss out.

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Cammell Laird boss: Strikes have cost £1.5m and 'more losses are imminent'

Members of the Unite union at the Birkenhead shipyard vow to continue strike action into the new year.

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'We know' who killed 2 women exactly 2 years apart, DA says

Investigators believe they know the identity of a person suspected of killing two people on the same date two years apart in the same area.

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Remembering Master Magician And Sleight-Of-Hand Artist Ricky Jay

Jay, who died Sunday, was an avid scholar of con games and could make cards disappear and reappear in ways that seemed impossible. He spoke to Fresh Air in 1987, 1998 and 2002.

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Remembering Master Magician And Sleight-Of-Hand Artist Ricky Jay

Jay, who died Sunday, was an avid scholar of con games and could make cards disappear and reappear in ways that seemed impossible. He spoke to Fresh Air in 1987, 1998 and 2002.

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Overly Orchestrated 'Roma' Is An Epic Of Everyday Life In Mexico

Critic Justin Chang says the immaculate staging of Alfonso Cuarón's new film is both an asset and a liability: "There's something curiously showy about the unshowiness of Roma."

(Image credit: Alfonso Cuarón/Netflix)

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KSL asks teens: ‘What are you really doing on social media?’

Parents might think they know what their teenager is doing on social media, but do they really? The KSL Investigators surveyed hundreds of parents and teens to find out.

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Overly Orchestrated 'Roma' Is An Epic Of Everyday Life In Mexico

Critic Justin Chang says the immaculate staging of Alfonso Cuarón's new film is both an asset and a liability: "There's something curiously showy about the unshowiness of Roma."

(Image credit: Alfonso Cuarón/Netflix)

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Family will be 'shocked and deeply disappointed' if child abuser doesn't serve full sentence

A man sentenced to the Utah State Prison for severely abusing his girlfriend's son had his first parole hearing Tuesday. Family members of the boy want his abuser to remain behind bars.

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Amber Ruffin Says What!?

Comedian Amber Ruffin discusses her work on Late Night with Seth Meyers, imbibing on Drunk History, and writing a musical about bigfoot. Then, she plays a game about cryptids.

(Image credit: Nickolai Hammar/NPR)

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Michelle Wolf: Doing It For The People

Comedian Michelle Wolf chats about her work on Wall Street, her career in comedy, and her performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Then, she plays a game with Amber Ruffin.

(Image credit: Nickolai Hammer/NPR)

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Police: Funeral director tried to bail out of jail with bad checks

A Cache County funeral director accused of arranging to have sex with a boy and exchanging pornographic images with him could now be in trouble for trying to make bail by writing bad checks, according to court documents.

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Police: Funeral director tried to bail out of jail with bad checks

A Cache County funeral director accused of arranging to have sex with a boy and exchanging pornographic images with him could now be in trouble for trying to make bail by writing bad checks, according to court documents.

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Marriott Starwood hotel data breach FAQ: What 500 million hacked guests need to know

Arlo is planning to launch a 4K smart home security camera next year

Arlo plans to launch a 4K security camera in 2019, potentially stealing a lead on competitors and kicking off a new race in the smart home security market.

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US Olympic Committee could make 2030 host city decision by Dec. 14

The Utah Olympic Exploratory Committee met to discuss the USOC's recent visit to Salt Lake. Organizers expect the USOC could make a decision during a Dec. 13 and 14 meeting.

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Women's state pension changes to get legal review

A group representing women born in the 1950s wins the right to a judicial review of state pension changes.

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Amazon's 7th-gen Kindle Paperwhite is $60 off, by far its lowest price yet

Google staff pledge cash to striking workmates

The cash would be used to support any staff striking over Google's work on a search engine for China.

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Health secretary Matt Hancock accused of breaking ethics rules

Labour demands an ethics probe after health secretary talks about "GP at Hand" app in an interview.

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Officer spends hours watching Utah woman's children while she files domestic violence report

Going to a police station to file a domestic violence report is difficult enough. But imagine trying to do it with three small children in tow.

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Herriman mayor accused of misspending nearly $1,000 of city funds

Herriman Mayor David Watts has been under fire for allegations of misspending nearly $1,000 of city funds. After months of waiting, the City Council plans to demand he repay the money. Meanwhile, county attorneys have declined to file charges.

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Get Six Sigma Certified With This Training Bundle, Now Just $59

Prosecutors fight Utah teen's attempt to have backpack-bomb case dismissed

Prosecutors are pushing back after a teen charged with bringing a backpack bomb to school in St. George asked a judge to toss the case.

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BJP-online’s month in photobooks

Salt Ponds by Peng Ke
“I like objects that don’t have much of a style. Like patterns in colouring books, clean black lines, and primary colours. Things that aren’t trying to sell you an ideology or concept. Most visual languages are so coded, so if I see things that are almost innocent, they really stand out to me.”A colourful look at life in contemporary Chinese cities, published by the impressive Ningbo-based outfit Jiazazhi Press.

© Peng Ke

Vivian Maier: The Color Work
Living in obscurity, working as a nanny in Chicago, Vivian Maier’s masterful street photography wasn’t discovered until 2009 – two years after she was forced to auction it off to pay the rent, and just after she passed away. But while her black-and-white images have since garnered world-wide attention, her colour work remained unknown until now, with a handsome book published by Harper Design. The foreword is provided by well-established master of street photography Joel Meyerowitz, who writes that: “One of photography’s truths is that the best street photographers learn to be invisible or, at the very least, to convince themselves that they are.” With this photobook, it’s good to see Maier’s invisibility cloak falling off a little more.

Chicagoland, 1975 images © Estate of Vivian Maier, Courtesy Maloof Collection and Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

PROVOKE: Provocative Materials for Thought, Complete Reprint of 3 Volumes
Founded in 1968, and led by some of Japan’s best-known photographers and art critics, PROVOKE expressed a radical anger and discontent with post-war world. It survived for just three issues, and was pilloried at the time, but is now widely recognised as a ground-breaking publication in Japanese photography history. Just 1000 copies were printed of the original issues though, making them rare and expensive collector’s items now; luckily Japanese publisher Nitesha has stepped in with an affordable, though faithful, reprint.

© Daido Moriyama

Fables of Faubus by Paul Reas
“I would say I photograph people but I think the pictures are more about systems people find themselves in,” says Paul Reas, whose 30-year retrospective charts the course of the British working class after the decline of industry and the rise of consumer culture. Organised chronologically, this book includes his early work on mining, moves through richly-coloured projects on shopping and on the heritage industry, and brings the reader right up to the present day with his project on the gentrification of London’s Elephant and Castle. Reas adds very personal insights into the social and economic history he was recording, the changes in documentary photography he helped bring about, and his very personal connection with his work. Published by GOST.

From the series I Can Help © Paul Reas

Out of the Shadows by Polly Braden and Sally Williams
It is estimated that 7% of the prison population in the UK has a learning disability, compared to around 2.2% of the general population. A study by Prison Reform Trust in 2008 found that people with learning disabilities are seven times more likely to come into contact with the police, five times more likely to be subject to control and restraint, and three times more likely to suffer from anxiety or depression, and spend time in solitary confinement. “It was really shocking. I had no idea that people with learning disabilities got sent to prison before I started this project,” says Polly Braden, who has created a book on their plight with the writer Sally Williams and the arts organisation Multi Story.

Rodney. From Out of the Shadows by Polly Braden and Sally Williams

Party! Party!! Party!!! edited by Ed Jones and Christopher Nesbit
In 1919, a year after the end of World War One and the start of the Weimar Republic in Germany, $1 was worth 48 Marks. By early 1922, $1 bought 320 Marks; by late 1922, $1 bought 7,400 Marks. By 1923, $1 bought 4,210,500,000,000 Marks. “Lingering at shop windows was a luxury because shopping had to be done immediately,” said the artist George Grosz at the height of this hyperinflation. “Even an additional minute could mean an increase in price.” Some Germans responded to the chaos with wild partying but, as the Archive of Modern Conflict’s new publication shows, meanwhile fascism was also gaining sway. A thought-provoking book, which poses only too relevant questions about how best to fight intolerance.

Landfall by Mimi Plumb
Born in Berkeley, Mimi Plumb was a lynchpin in the network of photographers and educators who kept the region grounded in socially-engaged documentary traditions. But her own work was all but forgotten until 2014, when Ann Jastrab, curator and gallery director at Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco showed her series What Is Remembered. Now Plumb’s images from the early 1980s have been published as a photobook, titled Landfall, which was launchd by TBW Books at Paris Photo.

Pyramid Lake, 1985, from the series Dark Days © Mimi Plumb

Women’s Market by Tom Wood
From 1978-1999 Tom Wood was a regular at the Great Homer Street market in Liverpool, north Britain, which was popularly known as the Women’s Market. Photographing the people he found there – who were predominantly women and their children – Wood avoided the cheap laughs that  harsher eyes might have seen in favour of a more subtle, gentle gaze. “The main thing that gave me authenticity I guess is going to the same places again and again,” he tells bjp-online. “I could have gone there three or four times and got what I considered a good set of pictures. But clearly I was after something much more elusive than that.”

© Tom Wood, from Women’s Market published by STANLEY BARKER

Manfred Heiting’s world-renown photobook collection goes up in flames
The biggest story in photobooks this month is also one of the saddest, with Dutch collector Manfred Heiting’s 36,000-strong library incinerated at his Californian home by wildfire. Heiting’s collection was considered one of the best in the world, including copies of most of the significant photobooks that appeared from 1888-1970 in Europe, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan, and had been used in numerous books and exhibitions. Heiting had recently donated his library to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston but just a few thousand books had been transferred so far. “It is terribly disappointing. For us all,” Heiting told Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

From Front, Immortal Hind and Idainaru Kensetsu: Manshukoku photobooks, 1943-44. The Japanese military were the first to see the potential of photography back in the late 19th century and used it continually ever since. Included in The Japanese Photobook by Manfred Heiting and Kaneko Ryuichi, published by Steidl

Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards
They’re one of the best-respected photobook awards in the world, and the winners were announced this month at Paris Photo. Laia Abril scooped Photobook of the Year for part one of her long-term project, A History of Misogyny, Chapter One: On Abortion, which is published by Dewi Lewis; Ursula Schulz-Dornburg won Photography Catalogue of the Year for The Land In Between, which is published by Mack Books, London; Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa and his publisher Roma Publications won the First Photobook prize with One Wall a Web. Pixy Liao also picked up a Juror’s special mention in the First Photobook category for Experimental Relationship Vol.1, which is published by Jiazazhi.

Illegal Instrument Kit, 2018 © Laia Abril, 2018

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Bestival owes London Grammar £175,000

The band are part of a list of creditors filed by the festival in its administration papers.

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Trump signs trade deal with Mexico and Canada

The revised deal has been renamed as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA.

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Customize your Windows desktop for just a buck with the Best of Stardock Humble Bundle

Marriott hack hits 500 million guests

Marriott says details of up to 500 million guests may have been accessed in a database breach.

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BJP-online Loves…

Lei Lei and Pixy Liao win at the 2018 Jimei x Arles festival
bjp-online has been following both Lei Lei and Pixy Liao for a while, so we were happy to see them both win prizes at the Jimei x Arles festival. Lei Lei picked up the Jimei x Arles Discovery Award, giving him 200,000 RMB plus a spot in Arles’ prestigious Discovery Award exhibition and competition next summer; Pixy Liao won the Jimei × Arles – Madame Figaro Women Photographers Award. And bjp-online loves the Jimei x Arles initiative in general, which is packed with interesting work by image-makers from China and beyond.

The Bogside, Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 1971 © Don McCullin, courtesy Tate

Don McCullin talks war and peace
He’s one of the UK’s best-respected photojournalists and he’s opening a retrospective at Tate Britain in February, the first big exhibition of photojournalism in the institution. But bjp-online loves Don McCullin’s thoughtful take on reportage, as discussed with former Observer Magazine and Independent Magazine picture editor Colin Jacobson. “Must you mess around with other people’s lives for your own career?” he muses. “When I see terrible things, I don’t always get upset…It’s an emotional weakness.”

The Soviet Photobook 1920-1941, edited by Manfred Heiting and published by Steidl

California’s wildfires incinerate a world-renown photobook collection
bjp-online loves photobooks, so we were sad to hear that Dutch collector Manfred Heiting’s 36000-strong library fell victim to the wildfires in California. Considered one of the most complete in the world, his collection included a copy of most of the important photobooks published from 1888-1970 in Europe, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan, and had been used to make many respected publications. Heiting had recently donated his library to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston but just a few thousand books had been transferred so far. “It is terribly disappointing. For us all,” Heiting told Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

© Tom Wood, from Women’s Market published by STANLEY BARKER

Tom Wood: Women’s Market
bjp-online loves British photographer Tom Wood’s work and Women’s Market, the photobook newly published by Stanley Barker, is a great example of why. Shot from 1978-1999, the images shine a gentle light on the people Wood found in a bustling local market, most of whom were women and children. “The main thing that gave me authenticity I guess is going to the same places again and again,” he tells bjp-online. “I could have gone there three or four times and got what I considered a good set of pictures. But clearly I was after something much more elusive than that.”

© Sopheak Vong

Angkor Photo Festival
“One of our long-term aims is to help encourage the development of uniquely Asian approaches and perspectives to photography. There is certainly more than enough talent in Asia for this to happen. Think of it as a postcolonial response that is very long overdue.” bjp-online loved Jessica Lam’s comments on the Angkor Photo Festival, which she now directs, and which opens on 08 December, featuring work by image-makers such as Sopheak Vong, Sovan Philong, Ore Huiying, Eleonore Sok, Roun Ry, Yang Yankang, Neak Sophal, Shoji Ueda, and many more.

Jeep girl, Shanghai 21 April 2005 by Jacqueline Hassink. From Car Girls by Jacqueline Hassink, published by Aperture

Obituary, Jacqueline Hassink
bjp-online loves the work of Dutch documentary photographer Jacqueline Hassink, so we were sad to hear she’s died, aged just 52. Breaking onto the scene with The Table of Power in 1992, a dissection of multinational corporate power as expressed through company boardrooms,  she also photographed the commoditisation of women at car shows, and our contemporary fascination with our smart phones.

Development and Pollution by Lu Guang, commissioned by Greenpeace International. April 9, 2005. Most factories in Hainan Industrial Park of Wuhai City in Inner Mongolia are high-energy consuming and high-pollution producing. China is now the world’s second-largest economy. Its economic development has consumed lots of energy and generated plenty of pollution. A habit of directly discharging unprocessed industrial sewage, exhaust gas and waste material has led to pollution of farmlands, grasslands, and drinking water as well as the ocean and the air. Over the past 10 years, factories have been moved from the country’s east to its central and western parts, thus greatly expanding the polluted area and increasing the severity of the situation. Photo courtesy of the World Press Photo Foundation

Chinese photographer Lu Guang disappears in Xinjiang
bjp-online loves press freedom, so we were sad to hear reports that Chinese documentary photographer Lu Guang has disappeared. A three-time World Press Photo winner who has shot images on social, environmental, and economic issues in China, he was picked up by national security offers during a visit to Xinjiang, according to his wife Xu Xiaoli – who also says she last heard from him on 03 November.

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Marriott hack hits 500 million guests

Marriott says details of up to 500 million guests may have been accessed in a database breach.

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'Subdued' demand from house buyers

Analysts say Brexit uncertainty is also making buyers cautious, as house prices rise by 1.9% in a year.

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JBL Xtreme 2 review: A sturdy Bluetooth speaker that's up for serious partying

Boasting a weatherization rating of IPX7, JBL's beefy Xtreme 2 portable Bluetooth speaker can deliver the tunes just about anywhere.

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Bethesda.net is broken: Why game makers who abandon Steam need to get the basics right

Lockly Secure Plus Review: Biometrics comes to the smart lock

You can open this smart lock with a PIN or your uniquely identifiable fingerprint.

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Razer Mamba Wireless (2018) review: It nails the fundamentals

In a world of digital distractions could bespoke newsprint be the answer?

The list of things you cannot do with a photograph posted on social media is extensive. You cannot send it as a postcard to a friend; you cannot frame it in your hallway; you cannot give it as a gift to mark a memorable moment in time. Most poignant perhaps, you cannot remember how it physically felt to hold it between your fingertips. The tendency to give a photograph but a second of your time – swiping, scrolling or skipping past an image almost becoming second nature – is a symptom of the content-saturated times we live in.

By contrast, the printed newspaper encourages readers to indulge in the material laid before them. Providing respite from the fast-paced digital world, it allows the opportunity to use your imagination and immerse yourself in a narrative. It was this aspect that led documentary photographer Alan Gignoux to turn to Newspaper Club to print his series Forests of Latvia. “I wanted to create something physical that would make people stop and spend more focused time viewing the work,” he says. “As with lots of things online, I felt it was too easy for people to miss pieces and flick past.” This is echoed by Los Angeles-based Bethany Vargas, who uses newsprint to display her professional portfolio. “Having something physical in your hands means much more than seeing something online. You can have it on your coffee table or make it into a poster,” she says.

From the series Forests of Latvia. © Alan Gignoux www.gignouxphotos.com

Alan Gignoux. © Newspaper Club

Photographers working today operate within an environment that looks markedly different than it did 20, 10, or even five years ago. To keep up with the pace of change, Newspaper Club has implemented an array of new developments to bring newsprint into the digital age. With the option to use the online design tool or upload your own PDF, you have control over layout, size and format. There is no minimum order so photographers can print a single copy as a test, before going on to print the desired amount. Recently introduced digital printing technologies mean that the newspapers now have richer colours, clearer photographs and increased definition, ensuring photographers can print their work in high quality. For Vargas, this made the newspaper the perfect promotional tool. A compilation of all her favourite images, the photographer brings the broadsheet with her to client meetings. “I felt the need to create something physical of my work which is something I want to explore more in the coming year. The layout, design, and imagery all complement your story in such a beautiful way,” she explains.

Bethany Vargas. © Newspaper Club

© Bethany Vargas. www.vargas.photo

Gignoux similarly cites the newspaper’s composition as one of its main attractions. “For this project, I wanted to transport people into these beautiful landscapes. Huge double page spreads allow you to do that,” he says. “A broadsheet newspaper allows for lots of variants of how images can be displayed: images can be shown side-by-side or one huge image can fill a spread and stop you in your tracks.”

None of this is to say that photography distributed digitally or via social media has to be the enemy of printed publishing: rather, print coexists alongside contemporary digital mediums. Gignoux adopts a multi-disciplinary approach to distributing his work. “Parts of Forests of Latvia have already been released on social media and we will be releasing more over the coming weeks. After that, I plan on distributing the paper in all the usual ways,” Gignoux says.

From the series Forests of Latvia. © Alan Gignoux

Despite the wax and wane of print publishing, newsprint has a special place in the photographer’s psyche. At a time when photographs are viewed, taken, shared and uploaded at a rate of unprecedented urgency, the opportunity to create a tangible legacy in newspaper form is appealing. In comparison with coffee table books or glossy magazines, the newspaper is a cost-effective, wide-reaching medium for photographers to showcase images. New technologies, printing options and methods of visual storytelling have changed the newspaper publishing game for visual artists.

Words: Alice Finney

Bethany Vargas. © Newspaper Club

From the series Forests of Latvia. © Alan Gignoux

–

Find out more about Newspaper Club and print your own newspaper.

This feature is supported by Newspaper Club. Please click here for more information on sponsored content funding at British Journal of Photography.

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Don McCullin talks war and peace

An interview with Don McCullin is never going to be a dull affair – he is a complex man who has told the story of his life many times before. He is unfailingly polite and gentlemanly, but one detects a slightly weary tone as he goes over the familiar ground. He often pre-empts the questions with clinical self-awareness.

The story of McCullin’s rise from the impoverished backstreets of Finsbury Park in north London is one of fortuitous good luck, but it didn’t start out that way. Born in 1935, he was just 14 when his father died, after which he was brought up by his dominant, and sometimes violent, mother. During National Service with Britain’s Royal Air Force, he was posted to Suez, Kenya, Aden and Cyprus, gaining experience as a darkroom assistant. He bought a Rolleicord camera for £30 in Kenya, but pawned it when he returned home to England, and started to become a bit of a tearaway.

Redemption came when his mother redeemed the camera, and MccCullin started to take photographs of a local gang, The Guvners. One of the hoodlums killed a policeman, and McCullin was persuaded to show a group portrait of the gang to  The Observer. It published the photo, and kick-started a burgeoning career as a photographer for the  newspaper.

“That gang picture was the ticket to rest of my life,” McCullin reminisces.  “£5 was the cost of my life as a photographer – that’s what my mother paid to redeem the camera I had pawned.” Did she have an instinct that the camera would be his making? “I don’t know, she was a complex woman,” he replies.

His time with The Observer was a mutual culture shock. He had entered what was essentially a middle-class world populated by university graduates, many of whom had never encountered the rough edges of a street-wise north London lad. But, “I wanted to learn. I watched how things were done in that world,” he told the BBC. “I realised I had to reinvent my life, shuffle about finding ways to educate myself.” An interviewer once described him a “not a learned man”. Amused, he responded, “But I have spent my life doing my best to learn.”

The Guvnors in their Sunday Suits, Finsbury Park, London, 1958 © Don McCullin, courtesy Tate

In his late 20s, McCullin developed a taste for foreign stories. Without being commissioned, he took himself off to shoot a story on the Berlin Wall, after seeing the famous news picture of an East German soldier leaping to freedom in the West. In 1964, The Observer asked if he would like to cover the civil war that was hotting up in Cyprus. McCullin was elated. It was his first real foray into a conflict zone and the photographs he produced were remarkable, arguably still some of his finest work. They catapulted him into the international arena of photojournalism.

He subsequently spent 18 years with The Sunday Times Magazine, at a time when the publication was one of the world’s most respected outlets for reportage stories. It was a buoyant and successful time for the publication, and McCullin was very much part of its culture. He talks of the magazine’s art department as “the best place in the world, full of genius”, and refers glowingly to the art director, Michael Rand. He recalls, almost incredulously, how the art editor David King (now better-known for his vast collection of Soviet Russian-related imagery) once laid out 18 pages of his work on Cuba.

Rand for his part tells me that McCullin was the perfect colleague. “He didn’t need briefing,” he says. “When he was not away on assignment, he would hang around the office, worrying about where he should go next. If he got interested in a story, I would say, ‘Why don’t you go?’ There was never any question of not sending him where he wanted to go.”

Yet McCullin remained his own man. “I always gave the art department a very tight edit, and they never asked for more,” he says. “They trusted me – after all, I had risked my life on many occasions for them and I’d earned the right to make my own selection.”

Rand confirms that McCullin was an excellent and ruthless editor of his own work, something rarely the case with photojournalists. Even so, McCullin admits to overlooking one of his most famous and iconic Vietnam images – the close-up of a shell-shocked American soldier. Arriving back from Vietnam exhausted, he was in  a hurry for a deadline. “I was too busy looking for the action pictures and missed it. It taught me a lesson.”

Harold Evans, editor-in-chief of The Sunday Times while McCullin produced his finest magazine work, places him alongside Robert Capa, Larry Burrows and Philip Jones-Griffiths as one of the greatest war photographers ever. Rand agrees, adding: “He has a particular eye. He worked best in extreme situations, on stories that had a certain edge, social stories about the human condition, like the genocide of the Brazilian Indians. He was not shooting news stories, more a personal view of the conflict. Not what happened, but what it was like.”

Shell Shocked US Marine, Hue, Vietnam, 1968 © Don McCullin, courtesy Tate

Rand feels that the plight of the poor and dispossessed brought out the best in him, and Evans agrees. “He cared about the victims, the ‘collateral damage’,” he tells me. “He couldn’t express it in words but he expressed it in his photography.” McCullin himself attributes his capacity for empathy partly to his own harsh childhood, which included some miserable experiences when he was evacuated during the war.

Nevertheless, McCullin now seems ambivalent and uneasy revisiting those heady magazine days. Talking to the photographer Frank Horvat, he recalled: “When I came back to the office and showed the pictures, they would say, ‘God, that’s terrible – make it a double-page spread’, or ‘That’s awful, it’s a good cover’. And I didn’t mind because it gave me an opportunity to go to the next war.”

In 1982 Evans resigned from The Sunday Times, citing differences over editorial independence. He was replaced by Andrew Neil, who dismissed McCullin the following year after the photographer publicly complained about the newspaper’s lack of serious foreign and social coverage.

McCullin displays a lacerating tendency to be hard on himself. “Must you mess around with other people’s lives for your own career?” he muses. He is much taken with a phrase used about the legendary Magnum photographer, Eugene Smith, who was described as having “nerve ends hanging out of his finger tips”. He worries that he himself lacks an appropriate sense of feeling. “When I see terrible things, I don’t always get upset…It’s an emotional weakness,” he concludes.

His great hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson, once likened his work to Goya, but McCullin dismisses the accolade. “I have a strong creative desire but I’m not trying to be an artist. I don’t need titles. I hate the title, ‘artist’. I just describe myself as a photographer.” He prefers to pride himself on being a professional craftsman. “I have a good nose for news. It’s about knowing your trade. There’s no confusion in my approach. I’m not wide-eyed, I’m precise, direct. I work to a set of rules, ethics. I don’t like wasting film. I have respect for film.”

Unlike the popular image of a war photographer, McCullin was never gung-ho or flash. He went into conflict zones with little equipment in a low-key, unostentatious way. He learnt quickly, as a first priority, how to extricate himself from tricky situations and, just as importantly, how to smuggle his film out if necessary. The writer James Fox said, “Don always knows when to leave, when to stay”, something which McCullin echoed to Horvat.

“A sense of timing is the most important part of the life of a professional photographer,” he said. “I have an uncanny way of being at the right place at the right time. And if the time is not right, I can be patient, stay in that place for hours, willing things to come.”

He shakes his head sadly at the recollection of an inexperienced photojournalist, Gad Gross, who  was killed near Kirkuk during the first Gulf War in 1991 when the Iraqis counter-attacked. McCullin decided that it was too dangerous to hang around and moved out, but Gross stayed on and was killed the next day. “He couldn’t read the signs,” says McCullin.

He doesn’t have much time for the conceptual approach. “If you try to direct the world with your mind, you won’t come up trumps. Out in the field, it’s all about having the nerve to wait. Most of my conflict photographs are full frame, not cropped. It’s all about discipline.”

The Bogside, Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 1971 © Don McCullin, courtesy Tate

Evans recalls a photograph taken in Cyprus, in which McCullin caught a woman at the very point of hearing of the death of her husband, being comforted by her young son. “The elements of that touching photograph lasted a fraction of a second – but McCullin did not shoot it from the hip, he took a light reading.”. “I always do,” the photographer tells me. “Even in battle photography I go over on my back and read the exposure. What’s the point of getting killed if you’ve got the wrong exposure?”

McCullin is searingly honest about the addictive side of war photography. “It gives you excitement, a tingle, a buzz. And fear, too.” He has admitted he “used to chase wars like a drunk chasing a can of lager”. But while he has made occasional forays into war zones during the past 20 years or so, he has concluded with distaste that the ability to work as an independent photojournalist has all but disappeared. He refuses to operate in a pack and is scathing about the embedding of photographers in current conflicts, unable to envisage how he would cope with the controls and restrictions.

After the invasion of Iraq, he was stuck on the northern border with John Simpson of the BBC and hated being there, having to wait for permission to cross over. He never wanted to be chaperoned, even by guerrilla groups. “They steer you away from the truth.” After the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, he spent time with the Mujahideen and it was “useless”. “All they wanted to do was show me bombed-out Russian tanks.” His eyes light up when he discusses how relatively easy it was to work in Vietnam. “You could always hitch a ride with the military and if you weren’t getting what you wanted, it was very easy to move on.”

But, looking back, two lost opportunities in his professional career continue to cause him grief. He was desolate when he was refused press accreditation to cover the Falklands War between Britain and Argentina in 1982, assuming that the-then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had banned him because his photographs might prove too disturbing politically. Very recently he found out that it had been an innocuous administrative decision by the Royal Navy which had already allocated its available press slots. “Bureaucracy is the worst religion,” he growls.

And when the world first heard about the massive famine in Ethiopia in 1984, McCullin was bitterly disappointed that The Sunday Times didn’t send him on the story. “I should have gone on my own, jumped on a plane by myself,” he says. “It showed me up.” He confesses to having been jealous of Sebastião Salgado’s photographs of the famine, which received worldwide acclaim. “I was at my best then. Salgado deserved his praise but this story was made for me. I was left at the bus stop.”

The theatre on the Roman city of Palmyra, partly destroyed by Islamic State fighters, 2017 © Don McCullin, courtesy Tate

Being a prisoner of Idi Amin was unpleasant. He was in the hotel swimming pool, waiting for a flight out of Uganda when Amin’s goons came for him and some other foreign journalists. “They took us to a notorious prison where hundreds of prisoners were being sledge-hammered to death every day. We were kicked and beaten with sticks. It took four days for the British High Commission to get us out of there.”

Yet his very worst day was not at war but when his first wife Christine died, something he wrote about so painfully in his autobiography, Unreasonable Behaviour. She was found dead on the day of his son’s wedding. “This was a drama bigger than any war,” he says. “Here was a body in my own house, not on some distant battlefield. Christine was taken out in a body bag – it was like some awful stage production. I was not prepared for this on my home patch.”

McCullin has only ever set up one photograph, and that was for a purpose. This was his famous picture of a dead Viet Cong soldier surrounded by his few possessions. “There was a kind of insanity in the air, there had been day after day of bloodletting,” he recalled. “I came across the body of a young Viet Cong soldier. Some American soldiers were abusing him verbally and stealing his things as souvenirs.

“It upset me – if this man was brave enough to fight for the freedom of his country, he should have respect. I posed him with his few possessions for a purpose, for a reason, to make a statement. You see, I’d developed a mind by then, I was my own man and I’d got attitudes. I felt I had a kind of puritanical obligation to give this dead man a voice.”

One picture above all seems to have seared itself into his mind, taken in Beirut in 1976 and showing six right-wing Phalangist fighters, one holding a lute, mockingly serenading the body of a dead Palestinian girl. “It was a very menacing atmosphere. The Phalangists were massacring Palestinian civilians and I had been told to leave the area. But these guys called me over to take a picture. I shot two frames without taking a meter reading and got out of there”. Later, he was stopped at a Muslim checkpoint by left-wing gunmen who threatened to cut his throat when they found he was in possession of a Falangist press pass.

Beirut, too, was the scene of one of the most disturbing things that happened in his life. An Israeli bomb had flattened an apartment block and a Palestinian woman came round the corner hysterical with grief, knowing that all her family were inside. McCullin took a picture of her but she started screaming at him, beating him with her fists. Someone pulled her off him but another Palestinian tried to grab his camera, holding a 9mm pistol to his head. He got away, but was in  deep shock.

Rather than fear, what he remembers is the humiliation of the event, witnessed by hundreds of Palestinians. “I had been too quick for my own good, my judgement was wrong. I deserved to be attacked by this woman.” Later that day, someone told him the same woman had just been killed. “At that moment, the pleasure of photography was stolen from me.”

Near Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin 1961 © Don McCullin, courtesy Tate Britain

In spite of fame and all the plaudits, McCullin displays palpable anxieties and self-doubts. His biggest fear remains that he might fail on an assignment. He even dreams of this failure, worrying about the loss of face, the gossip among his fellow photographers. Michael Rand confirms this insecurity. “He was constantly worried about whether he had got the story. He had no fear of going into danger zones but had this terrible fear of failure. He told me once that he would sometimes vomit with anxiety flying to a difficult assignment.”

Whenever he gives talks about his work, he is always asked, “Have you ever stopped being a photographer, put down the camera and helped people in trouble or danger?” He recalls the best photograph he never took, while working on an AIDS story in Zambia. “I went into a hut, the conditions were terrible. A woman was lying on a stinking mattress cared for by her sister. We’d just come from a hospice where there were empty beds and so we suggested she should be moved there.”

McCullin went up the road to hire a van from the local market. While he and the driver were arranging the back of the van, he saw the woman struggling out of the hut carrying her sick sister on her shoulders. “My camera was in my bag, so I missed a great shot because I was doing something more important. I could have asked her to do it again but I didn’t because I would have felt no pride in such a reconstruction.”

In these later days of his life, McCullin is preoccupied with the landscape and nature around him in Somerset, in the West of England. He has described his love of landscape as “herbal medicine for my mind”. He is scornful about fame, comparing it, tellingly, to a “smelling body”, but is honest enough to admit he enjoyed it when it came to him in the past. He says he has not become rich out of photography, but is rich in lifestyle, taking spiritual energy from his life in the countryside.

“Who wants a house full of dying people, 6,000 prints of dying people amidst all this tranquillity?” he asks rhetorically. He mentions in passing that he has been made a substantial offer for his archives from the US, so perhaps these residual ghosts will be spirited away.

His body is in pain now from arthritis and he has eye trouble, a curse for a photographer. Worse, he suffered a stroke in March 2009, and this restricts the energy he can devote to photography. A recent two-year project on Roman relics took a lot out of him. He had a bad fall and discovered four weeks later that he had punctured his lung. “I don’t dwell on it, I try to ward it off,” he says, talking of his health. “All I want is another five good years with my son, Max.”

Escaping from Finsbury Park was undoubtedly a strong motivational force in McCullin’s life, but he refutes the suggestion that his career was a product of the class war. “I don’t want to wave that flag for the rest of my life,” he says. “I got rid of my inferiority complex 20 years ago. I want to be recognised for my own achievements.”

He talks of the world of his childhood as one of violence, bigotry, pain, and a complete absence of books. “I haven’t squandered the privilege of being taken out of my background. Growing up, I was an urchin, but I stopped being a blind boy from Finsbury Park without culture and music.” He now has a passion for classical music, listening to it in his darkroom, and he can hum his favourite pieces by heart. “I feel at the edge of my journey with photography now. I’m older, more knowledgeable, but I’m never satisfied, never arriving, always looking for something better to come. I’m a lost soul without photography.”

McCullin once described the darkest side of his work as “a contamination of my mind that will never leave me”. His life in Somerset is a kind of exorcism of this mental pollution but it is as if he cannot quite believe his luck. He still seems to be looking over his shoulder from time to time, watching out for danger, wondering whether this life that he has worked so hard to create will all fall apart, and he’ll find himself back on the streets of north London, scrabbling for survival.

Don McCullin is on show at Tate Britain from 05 February-06 May 2019 www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/don-mccullin

This interview was first published in the March 2010 issue of BJP.

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