Don McCullin: Broken Beauty<\/a>, features images of ancient statues photographed during trips around some of the world\u2019s great museums.<\/p>\nThey have not been seen before in the UK, and McCullin, 90, said this show \u2013 and one final trip to the Vatican to photograph more statues \u2013 would be his swansong.<\/p>\n
He told the Guardian: \u201cI\u2019m too old to work now. After 60-odd years, I\u2019m slightly tired of it all, really. I\u2019m going to do this one last visit to the Vatican. And then I\u2019m going to basically give up photography because I\u2019m just simply physically too old. Your body, in a way, has the final say.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCullin\u2019s fascination with Roman statues began when he travelled to north Africa with the writer Bruce Chatwin in the 1970s and was enchanted by Roman ruins there.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWhen Bruce died [in 1989], I was at a kind of crossroads in my life. I had this flashback of Bruce and me in this Roman town, so I rang my publisher and I said, I\u2019d like to do a book about Roman cities. They didn\u2019t seem very enthusiastic about the idea, but they gave me quite a small advance and off I went.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCullin visited more Roman sites in north Africa and a book called Southern Frontiers: A Journey Across The Roman Empire was published. He said: \u201cI was so thrilled about doing the book because I stepped out of my safety zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
More recently, he has visited museums in the US and Europe, often visiting before or after public opening hours, giving him the space to study the statues.<\/p>\n
His images of sculptures at the Holburne are hung alongside the work he is most famous for, such as soldiers and civilians in places struck by conflict, including Vietnam, Cyprus and Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Don McCullin, pictured at the Hay festival in 2008. Photograph: Martin Godwin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
McCullin said he had never liked being labelled a war photographer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a photographer the way somebody who would paint pictures would be called an artist. I went out of my way to show that I was capable of photographing the English landscape and objects of beauty. I haven\u2019t stayed in one mindset. I\u2019ve moved around with my thinking and I\u2019m capable of doing all kinds of photographic things.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the most striking features of the sculpture photographs are the jet black backgrounds. \u201cI think it\u2019s part of my soul, really. There\u2019s a dark side of me because of the war and the tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The director of the Holburne, Chris Stephens, said he was thrilled that visitors to the Bath museum would be the first to see the photographs.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cAround them, we\u2019ve got a constellation of his work representing his key projects. One of the things we want to emphasise is that however horrific the subject matter, he\u2019s got this amazing empathy, and draws out the humanity of the people he\u2019s photographing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephens highlighted the black backgrounds. \u201cThe black has a sort of almost physical quality. It\u2019s actual \u2018stuff\u2019. The intensity of that black is phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n
He thought McCullin\u2019s interest in the Roman empire was complicated. \u201cIt\u2019s a reflection of the resilience of these things. They\u2019re 2,000 years old and they\u2019re still there, but they are in ruins and the sculptures are broken and damaged. They\u2019re resilient but vulnerable and a reminder that civilisations come and go.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for McCullin, after his final Vatican visit, he says he will turn his attention to his garden in Somerset.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got a wonderful garden here. I grew some dahlias last year and some tomatoes and I think I\u2019m going to have another go this year and really expand my thrill of growing things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don McCullin: Broken Beauty runs from 30 Jan \u2013 4 May 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He is revered for his extraordinary black-and-white images documenting conflict, humanitarian crises and the tougher side of postwar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-396426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}