The “Shame of Memory” Haunts a War Photographer

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PERPIGNAN, France â€" A 13th-century church is a fitting location for the exhibition of war photographs by Don McCullin, a man intent on paying public penance. Most photographers would be proud of the honors and accolades showered on Mr. McCullin at Perpignan’s Visa Pour l’Image festival this week.

Instead, he recoiled in shame, as if the words had wounded him.

“Photography was a beautiful thing to me,” Mr. McCullin, 78, said. “But once I started putting my hands in the blood and suffering of war I became really disillusioned. I would stand in front of men who were going to be executed in front of me, crying, looking at me and hoping I could stop their murder. There were dying children in Africa who were starving, and I would come to a feeding center. They would think here was a white man, he is going to bring some food aid. All I had was a Nikon camera around my neck.”

His images from Vietnam and Biafra are direct and intimate, a departure from some conflict images on display that were more stylized and self-conscious. His exhibit towered over the others at the festival. Mr. McCullin received the first Le Figaro Lifetime Achievement Visa d’Or award on Wednesday, but the next day during a panel discussion he was back at his Shakespearean best, explaining his reticence to accept acclaim for his decades of bearing witness to some of mankind’s worst atrocities.

“At the end of the day, after years and years of assuming you can steal the pain of people in your pictures and the suffering of soldiers, civilians and starving children and dying children that drop dead in front of you, you have to suffer the shame of memory and then you have to somehow live with it, sleep with it, understand it without trying to become insane,” he said. “Nobody said that you have to get on this airplane and go to these wars and make these terrible images. I did it. I have to accept the responsibility.”

Mr. McCullin is widely considered one of the greatest living war photographers, along with David Douglas Duncan, 97. The two appeared on a panel on the topic along with John Morris, 97, the legendary photo editor who has worked with both of them as well as with Robert Capa. They were joined by photographers Patrick Chauvel and Yuri Kozyrev.

During the panel, they sparred over the potential effect of photographs.

“We haven’t changed a thing,” Mr. McCullin said. “Once the Syrian war is over you can bet your life there will be another tragedy in my lifetime. We will not see the end of war and suffering.”

Mr. Morris, who has worked for Life magazine, Magnum and The New York Times, strongly disagreed. He pointed to the impact of Eddie Adams’s Saigon execution photo and Nick Ut’s image of a Cambodian girl after being napalmed, both of which he put in The New York Times when he was director of photography.

Also attending the festival was Santiago Lyon, director of photography for The Associated Press. Though he is now in charge of hundreds of photographers around the world, Mr. Lyon was a respected conflict photographer himself, covering El Salvador, the first Gulf War, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Somalia. In an interview this week, he weighed in on the effect of war images, saying that “this notion of eliminating impunity” was an important motivation for conflict photography.

“Because there were photographs, you can’t pretend that we didn’t know that these things happened,” he said. “Now what we do about them is different, but while I think it’s naïve to think one particular picture is going to change the course of events, I think it’s true that a body of work can influence the course of events. When you look at, for example, the effects of A.P.’s coverage in Vietnam, which was instrumental for some people in shaping their perception of the war and I would say probably played some role in the way policies were finally carried out.”

While the festival, with the exception of Mr. McCullin, celebrated war photography, the conflict in Syria and the debate over a possible United States military response dominated conversation. Several top awards went to photo coverage from Syria: Laurent Van der Stockt of Reportage for Getty Images won the top award Visa d’Or News for his coverage of Syria, including the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack.

Jean-François Leroy, the festival’s founder and director, is torn about photojournalists covering the conflict in Syria. While he said it was important that the world pay attention to the more than 100,000 people who have died in the war, it has become increasingly dangerous to work there, with dozens of journalists kidnapped or killed in the last six months. Today, few international photojournalists are working in Syria, and most major publications and wire services are sending neither staff members nor freelance photographers to areas where there is fighting.

“I think that going to Syria today is suicidal,” Mr. Leroy said. “Once you get into Syria it’s hard to know who is who, and your fixer might sell you for money.”

Mr. Leroy’s friend Stanley Greene went to Syria this year without an assignment and was wounded by shrapnel. Mr. Leroy said he “lost many hours of sleep” while Mr. Greene was in Syria. Later, Mr. Leroy refused to look at the photographs or consider them for exhibit at the festival.

“I lost so many friends during the Arab Spring,” he said. “I lost Rémy Ochlik and one year before Chris [Hondros] and Tim [Hetherington]. I’m fed up with picking up the phone and hearing one of my friends died. As Don McCullin said, ‘No picture is worth losing your life over.’ ”

Mr. Leroy is so worried about the targeting of journalists in Syria that he has pledged to neither exhibit nor promote photographers who cover Syria without insurance and an assignment from a major news organization, which he feels are better suited to protect photographers who are kidnapped or injured.

But the pull of war is strong.

Despite his protestations about the futility of photographing war, even Mr. McCullin went to Syria briefly this year. He found that at 78 he was unable to run fast enough wearing a flak jacket when he was being fired at. In retrospect, he felt it was a mistake to have gone.

But it is young photographers who have always flocked to war, making a name for themselves by being on the front lines and putting themselves at risk. And many still want to cover Syria, driven by idealism, fame or adventure.

Syria offers extreme dangers, but all conflict photographers started without experience. They went out and were usually helped by more experienced peers.

One of the most popular exhibits in Perpignan was shot by an inexperienced 28-year-old with a Rolleiflex whose career as a photographer spanned a total of four weeks in Normandy in July 1944. The photographer survived, but decided that this sort of work was best left to experienced professionals.

John Morris, then with Life, was editing the military pool photographers working in France, including Robert Capa and Robert Landry. While they were away shooting, Mr. Morris decided to take photographs himself. After the war, those 12 rolls of negatives sat untouched for decades until Mr. Morris examined them earlier this year.

Although both Mr. McCullin and Mr. Duncan praised the medium-format square images of life along the sidelines of World War II, Mr. Morris protested that he was not a photographer â€" “someone found them in a drawer.”

Perhaps the world was better off with Mr. Morris becoming one of the most influential photo editors of the 20th century. One does wonder what would have happened had he pursued his own photography.

But he has not.

“It is easier and safer to be a desk man,” he said, “and you get lunch.”

James Estrin/The New York Times Don McCullin, left, and John Morris at the Visa Pour l’Image photo festival on Wednesday.

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