The Stillness of Life is a book of still life photographs and landscapes by Sir Don McCullin - a majority of which are previously unpublished. The publication of the book coincided with the photographer’s 90th birthday and offers a contemplative and meditative review of his work spanning decades.
McCullin has been creating still life arrangements in his garden shed at home in Somerset since the early 1980s. Each still life has been lyrically constructed with the natural - cut flowers (lilies, fox-gloves, gladioli), fruit or fungi - often presented alongside beloved mementos of his travels; a bronze dragon from the orient, a junk shop vase, a Hindu goddess. He arranges disparate inanimate objects with fruits and flowers as a kind of shrine to pay respect to the idea of transience versus permanence. These self-styled altars act as a homage to beauty, to the changing seasons and the fleeting passage of time.
The landscapes in the book are gathered from throughout McCullin’s career - from early photographs of the Industrial North of the UK, to India, Africa and more recent images taken closer to home. Shot to enhance a metallic light, lowering skies and the denuded trees; there can be a sense of foreboding and desolation in the landscapes, as if the photographer were contemplating the aftermath of a battle scene. Vast eternities are suggested in his expanses of desert sand and biblical drama in his silver-edged cloudscapes. Any figures in the frame are incidental and merely contribute to the composition - a departure from the human-focused documentary work for which McCullin became known.
The still lifes and landscapes are united by McCullin’s ability to both tell and print a compelling story within the frame. They demonstrate his mastery of lighting - using shadows and minimal highlights to create a sense of drama and depth, to animate objects or create poetry within a landscape. McCullin also maintains focus on texture in both genres - the delicacy of flower petals or the smooth wood of a statue in a still life, and the contrast of water and mud in his landscapes. In these traditional genres of still life and landscape, McCullin’s contemporary vision breathes new life and beauty into the everyday.
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