I met one of my heroes last week. If you're a UK photographer or journalist of a certain age (over 40) you will have grown up alongside Don McCullin's searing battlefield images.
His photographs from The Congo, Vietnam, Biafra, Northern Ireland, Cambodia and Beirut defined a generation. And he was the man who was refused media accreditation by the government during the Falklands War for fear of the images he would certainly have brought home.
McCullin has seen horrific sights that most of us will fortunately never have to witness – read his autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour and you'll see why he is such a seminal figure and why it meant a lot to me to be introduced to him.
I'm a lousy photographer, but one of the reasons I became a journalist was because of the power of McCullin's images on the pages of the Sunday Times (this was in the days when it was a newspaper worth reading and not one that gave paperboys and girls hernias).
McCullin is now in his 70s and lives in Somerset where he's taken breathtakingly atmospheric photos of the Somerset Levels. He was being awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Gloucestershire last week. His speech was humble, moving and brimful of humanity. I sat there thinking 'oh god, oh god, I can't cry, oh damnit, I will cry …"
After the ceremony, where my luvvies also received their degrees, I glued myself to Kim, my colleague who teaches Photojournalism, and wheedled an introduction. And I'm so glad I did, as the speech reflected the man in person. I've often been nervous in the past about meeting people I admired, in case they turned out to be blithering idiots. In this case I needn't have worried. McCullin was charming, modest and gracious enough not to be fazed by me gabbling like an idiot!
And while I was talking to him, I told him about my friend Ian. Ian died six years ago and I miss him every damn day. He was a photographer and when he died, I inherited a lot of his books, including some of McCullin's work. Ian would have been as excited as I was to meet one of photography's true greats.
