McCullin was deeply affected by the trauma of reporting from some of the most violent conflicts of the second half of the twentieth century. When he returned home from these assignments, he often turned his attention to the tough lives of people in Britain. He photographed communities living in northern cities like Bradford and Liverpool, focusing on areas that had been neglected and left impoverished by policies of deindustrialisation. Often these trips were made on his own initiative, rather than being sent on assignment by a newspaper. McCullin saw similarities between their lives and his own childhood. Although he was ‘reporting’ on poverty and social crisis, he also identified deeply with his subjects, picturing the lives of others as a means of learning more about himself. One of the best ways to inspire yourself to take more and better landscapes is to look at the work of others, so, we’ve compiled this list of some of the best landscape photography books that have passed our desks over the past few years. We’ve included a mixture of collections that include the work of several photographers, and books created by just a single artist. It doesn’t matter really – we just love seeing great landscapes! Fred Ritchin: Today we’re going to talk about you being a photographer, a larger career than that of a war photographer. FR: Eugene Smith used to listen to Wagner when he was printing. That’s how he’d stay up for nights in a row, listening to Wagner, and he’d get those deep prints, like yours—deep skies, your dark skies. Having been evacuated to the safety of Somerset during the Blitz, McCullin has had a lifelong connection with the open farmland and hill country of the South West, feeling at peace within the solitude of the expansive landscape. The largest body of work featured in the exhibition explores local areas within walking distance of the photographer’s home, including ‘Looking towards Creech Hill, near Bruton, Somerset’ (2019), ‘The Dew Pond, Somerset’ (1988) and ‘Batcombe Vale’ (1992-93). McCullin is able to evoke dramatic painterly representations of his home county with quiet confidence, shifting between the flooded lowlands of the Somerset levels to woodland streams, nearby monuments and historic hill forts.

Now that his Roman series is complete, he has a yearning to photograph the Parthenon Marbles. He wants to keep working but can’t spend as much time in his beloved darkroom as he’d like because the chemicals are bad for his health. He suffers from asthma and had a toe amputated last year. “Didn’t do any good.” He shows me his latest work: huge and lovely images of classical statues from museums around the world, made into inkjet prints by a friend. He’s having to learn to cede control to others which, perhaps, for someone who regards himself as a self-made man who got out of the badlands by the skin of his teeth, doesn’t come naturally.DM: It was like what we would call a head-butt. It was about butting somebody in the head and showing them my images. Now I’m behaving in a much more dignified way. Naturally, I’m getting older and coming to the end of my life, so I’ve slowed down. I’ve reinvented myself. The reason I am doing these new landscapes, this new Roman project, is because it’s a form of healing. I’m kind of healing myself. I don’t have those bad dreams. But you can never run away from what you’ve seen. I have a house full of negatives of all those hideous moments in my life in the past. Mark Holborn quoted in ‘One Man Walking’, The Landscape by Don McCullin, published by Jonathan Cape (2018) 2. Don McCullin quoted in Open Skies by Don McCullin, published by Harmony Books (1989) During the Vietnam War, the Cambodian government allowed communist North Vietnamese guerrillas to use Cambodia as a supply route to their troops fighting in South Vietnam. But in 1970, this government was overthrown, and an anti-communist regime took control. The new government forces fought against the communist North Vietnamese troops in Cambodia and the emerging Khmer Rouge. The US intervened with a bombing campaign targeting the communist forces. However, US bombs also killed large numbers of civilians and significantly contributed to the Cambodian refugee crisis, which saw 2 million displaced people. However his greatest asset was his instinctive sense of what made a great photo. He calls himself a travelling inquisitor, "turning over stones and seeing if there’s any life underneath them, like you do as a child on a beach."

Was he ever scared for his life? “You’re on a tightrope on a very high wire,” he says. “One slip and you’re done for. When I was working in those places, I was constantly swivelling my head and eyes around to make sure that my intrusion was very limited. I had to get the pictures, but one false move could get you into all kinds of trouble – maybe even killed. That kind of life is gossamer-thin with danger.” Old age is making me frail. I stumble sometimes. I just had an operation to remove a tumour. I’m unfazed by the pain. Both the online and physical exhibitions follow McCullin’s major retrospective at Tate Britain, London in Spring 2019, featuring over 250 photographs that celebrate the scope and achievements of his entire career. The survey exhibition is due to travel to Tate Liverpool later this year.McCullin travelled to Germany in 1961 to photograph the building of the Berlin Wall. After the Second World War, Europe had become a divided continent formed of capitalist countries in the west and communist regimes in the east. The economic situation was significantly poorer in Eastern Europe, with food and housing in short supply, as well as restrictions on individual freedoms. Germany was split into four zones, controlled by Britain, the US, France and Russia. The three western areas formed West Germany. The Soviet-controlled zone became East Germany. The capital city, Berlin, located within the Soviet zone, was similarly divided. In the making of the photograph of a fallen young North Vietnamese soldier, he has spoken of how it was the only time he altered what was photographed. McCullin was appalled at having witnessed how the dead body had been ill-treated by two American soldiers; hunting for souvenirs they had trampled on his possessions, including photos of his mother and sister. Arranging such personal effects into a still life beside the body, McCullin honours the death of this young man and finds an effective means of countering the abjection and anonymity so often associated with photographs of the dead in war. Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.” After years of photographing bloodshed, McCullin was so haunted by what he had seen that he decided to stop. He took up landscape photography instead, capturing the tranquil English countryside surrounding his home in eastern Somerset. For his recent book Southern Frontiers (2010), he made elegiac images of Roman ruins in North Africa and the Middle East – including the ancient city of Volubilis in Morocco. The Landscape Photographer of the Year competition has been running for a fair few iterations now, and if you’re looking for more landscape inspiration, the previous years’ collections are just as spectacular as the latest. The 2021 competition was the award’s 14th year – you can see all the 2021 LPOTY winners here – and includes some absolute gems.

A striking aspect of McCullin’s work, aside from its compositional brilliance, is that it is not simply ice-cold and detached, but warmed through with flashes of empathy for its subject matter: Harold Evans, his editor at The Sunday Times, used to call him “a conscience with a camera”. How dispassionate must a photojournalist be, I wonder?FR: But it seems to me you’re also trying to find a meaning in life, what’s good in life or what’s important, or as you say, dignified. The war itself is the abattoir. War itself is the meaninglessness of life, and somehow that is there, even in your landscapes and the Roman work. You’re finding something else, something spiritual, some other kinds of answers in life. I photograph landscapes now. I’m not a man at peace. I still carry guilt and pain within me. Landscapes take my mind off all I’ve seen. It’s like therapy. It’s healing. Don McCullin: The Stillness of Life’ is at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, until 4 May; ‘Don McCullin’ is at Tate Liverpool from 5 June–27 September. That exhibition presented a huge selection of images from McCullin’s career, from his days documenting 1950s working-class life in Finsbury Park – the first photograph he sold, of a Teddy boy gang in a derelict building, was one he took in his spare time with a camera he had bought while on national service – to most of the major wars of the late 20th century (many photographed for the Sunday Times, his main employer for years), to social reportage in the north of England. The critically acclaimed show attracted more than 180,000 visitors, and will move to Tate Liverpool this June, but it’s hard for that not to feel like a full stop on a career. ‘The Tate probably damaged me a bit, because it said “This is it.” You have all these people come, say nice things, and you think, what else can I say?’ Sir Don McCullin, photographer and 'sky stalker', talks to Mariella Frostrup about the landscape surrounding his Somerset house.