Don McCullin Quotes

I only use a camera like I use a toothbrush. It does the job.

Photography isn't about seeing, it's about feeling. If I don't have some kind of feeling for what I'm shooting, how can I expect the person who looks at it to feel anything?

Photography is the truth if it’s being handled by a truthful person.

Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see is what my life is all about.

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.

The real truth of life is on the streets. Photograph the daily lives of people, and how they exist, and how they fight for space and time and pleasure.

You cannot walk on the water of hunger, misery, and death. You have to wade through to record them.

I met an Englishwoman in Africa. She said she became a doctor because she saw one of my pictures. That’s all I want – just one doctor in Africa.

Sometimes it felt like I was carrying pieces of human flesh back home with me, not negatives. It's as if you are carrying the suffering of the people you have photographed.

I am a professed atheist, until I find myself in serious circumstances. Then I quickly fall on my knees, in my mind if not literally, and I say : 'Please God, save me from this.'

There's always a threat surrounding the things you love

I want to be the toughest photographer in the world.

Photography has been very, very generous to me, but at the same time has damaged me.

I feel shabby - because I've made a name, quite a good name, out of photography. And I still find myself asking the same questions: Who am I? What am I supposed to be? What have I done?

I'm lucky - I don't feel any pressure.