DON MCCULLIN

Most of the people I know, their marriages went down the drain, like mine - something I am not proud of.

I have a store full of thousands and thousands of images in my brain. I've got this terrible feeling I'm like some abattoir boss: I know death; I know the cut pieces of the human body.

I think media has lost its way. We must recognize that the proprietors of these organizations have put on a form of censorship. Basically, they're more interested in celebrity, narcissism, rich people, good-looking people, and successful sportsmen.

I know where I'm coming from; I know what I bring and what I take. I take more than I bring; I bring hope, but I give nothing. That's not the role I'm proud of.

I love photography. I love the imagery. I love what I do.

Many people misunderstand me - I'm quite happy to be called a photographer. All of a sudden, the art world has caught up with photography, and they are trying to hijack us.

America has never taken me to its heart. I've always been an outsider.

I couldn't possibly have any regrets, because I've been very lucky, I've been celebrated, and I've survived. I couldn't have one single regret. That would be absurd.

I started out on photography accidentally. A policeman came to a stop at the end of my street, and a guy knifed him at the end of my street. That's how I became a photographer. I photographed the gangs that I went to school with.

Many people send me letters in England saying, 'I want to be a war photographer,' and I say, go out into the community that you live in. There's wars going on out there; you don't have to go halfway around the world on an airplane where there are bombs and shells. There are social wars that are worthwhile.

I treat my life as though I am on a tightrope.

When I take a black-and-white portrait, it's not particularly meant to please you. It's meant to talk to you; it's meant to shame you. It's meant to scream out at you, and it has a message.

I've always thought photography is not so much of an art form but a way of communicating and passing on information.

In my photography, I always lean towards the underprivileged because that's where I came from. When I went to the wars, I attempted to go and stand by those who were being trodden on. By that, I mean people like the Palestinians. When I go to India, I see really the poorest people, and I tend to be drawn to them.

I've seen my own blood and broken a few bones. I've been hit, which isn't an entirely bad thing, as at least you have a glimpse of the suffering endured by the people you are photographing. And in a sense, crumbling empires and war have been with me all my life.

Photography belongs to a fraternity of its own. I was young and enthusiastic and wanted to take good pictures to show the other photographers. That, and the professional pride of convincing an editor that I was the man to go somewhere, were the most important things to me.

I grew up as a boy with aggression.

There's nothing I don't know about war. The stench of it. But I say that without any pride. War is a terrible thing. My hope is that you'll get that through looking at one of my pictures.

I have a dark room, and I still process film, but digital photography can be a totally lying kind of experience; you can move anything you want... the whole thing can't be trusted, really.

I was dyslexic and uneducated and left school at 14. I grew up in Finsbury Park, which was a pretty bad place where you had to fight and be beaten. It was just a constant roundabout of violence.

I have more of a relationship with the subject than I do with my camera equipment. To me, camera equipment is like a tin of shoe polish and a brush - I use that as a tool, but my basic camera is my emotion and my eyes. It's not anything to do with the wonderful cameras I use.

Every street in London has a camera, and if you ever travel up the M4, it feels as if George Orwell should be your chauffeur.

I'm from England, and like every other great empire who stole bits of the world, there is a price to pay. And I was born in 1935. So, since I've been conscious of the world, I've either been in, or been on the periphery of, a war zone.

I've fallen in love with the classical world of imagery, and what I'd like to do now over the last bit of my life is to photograph some nudes.

I've spent most of my life embracing violence in wars and revolutions. Even a famine is a form of violence. Because I photograph people in peril, people in pain, people being executed in front of me, I find it very difficult to get my head around the art narrative of photography.