Sleeping with Ghosts [antikvár]

M Introduction I was standing in my father's room reading the Sunday Times Magazine cover story 'Vietnam: old glory, young blood.' The date was 24 March 1968, and I was 22. I looked at all the pictures, read all the words. I can still remember the feel of the newsprint in my hand. I recall the tan, red and black carpet on which I was standing and my father's desk and chair. I remember every detail of that moment because of the cold terror spreading behind my eyes into my neck and hair. For several million people like me - not only in Britain, of course; the same pictures were published in the New York Times, Paris Match and around the world - Don McCuiUn's photographs became part of the furniture of the mind. His stark images imprinted us with feeUngs of shame. Perhaps this was a war that America would not and should not win. The same kind of event occurred on other occasions, detailing other crises and catastrophes on other continents and the name of the photographer Don McCullin became familiar. He became our eye-witness, showing us events we should perhaps have preferred not to see. This book is his witness to recent history. He became such a passionately eloquent witness that some have preferred to think of him as an artist rather than a reporter. However, photographer -with all the ambiguities that surround it - is the word. His work has done it honour. I picked up the March 1968 magazine again a few moments ago. As I thought, the Vietnam story goes on for page after page, spread after spread, the images big and bled to the edges of the sheet, not just black and white but in a more visceral mix produced by four-colour printing, with hints of purple showing under the black. There is also Don McCullin's own commentary. He wrote about his photograph (page 54) of a black Marine, with the build of Muhammad Ali, hurling a grenade during hand-to-hand fighting with the Viet Cong in the Citadel at Hué: Both sides were dug in and lobbing grenades at each other. Unfortunately on this occasion the Marines were short of grenades. We were trying to advance along the earthwork top of the Citadel wall of Hué and the grenades were being passed up the line of dug-in men one at a time. Naturally there had to be a pause in supply at some stage. When this happened the Viet Cong popped up and hurled a grenade. I'd just taken this picture before it happened the grenade landed short but it wounded the Gl in the hand. Part of the value of this retrospective of McCullin's work is that it presents his photographs in duotone, a printing method which gives a similar effect to the four-colour process originally used in the Sunday Times Magazine. The book has been designed by David King, who was Art Editor of the magazine at the time many of these photographs were taken. In addition, McCuUin has taken the opportunity to include pictures he has not shown before, such as the one to be seen on page 55 - the moment after his proud 'javelin thrower', as he calls the black Marine, was hit. We also see Marines going through the effects of a dead Viet Cong soldier moments before McCuIlin took another famous photograph (page 74) which personalised the enemy known as 'Charlie Cong', as McCullin's photographs of wounded civilians personalised the Vietnamese people dehumanised as 'gooks'.