Unreasonable Behaviour: An Autobiography (1990, edition 2010) is the reminiscent reflection of the first 50 years of British war photojournalist Don McCullin.
Born in 1935, with siblings Marie and Michael, he starts his autobiography in wartime London in the 1940s, and the death of his father, aged 40, when he was 14 years old. He briefly mentions national service in the air force at the age of 18, but it was a generous act from his mother, and a murder, that led to a career in photojournalism.
Paris, ‘the home of serious photo-journalism’ was where he made the ‘real decision to live dangerously’ and Berlin provided the breakthrough photographs. El Salvador was the beginning of the end.
The title, Unreasonable Behaviour, refers to his life as a ‘delinquent photographer’ – his term – and the (disrespectful) actions he took to secure a wartime photo to make a living. He tests his luck, he sees how far he can go, and it is afterwards that he reflects on how poignant or harrowing it was. He admits to times of being ‘bad-tempered and erratic,’ but there were a few colleagues who brought out the best in him—albeit briefly.
For The Observer to The Telegraph to Quick magazine and the Sunday Times; from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Vietnam to Egypt to Papua New Guinea and Cambodia; and from war assignments to travel stories, he has a tale for everything.
Most of the stories are short, but one is much longer—his imprisonment in Uganda under President Idi Amin’s regime. Sometimes, he said, ‘It was beyond war, it was beyond journalism, it was beyond photography, but not beyond politics.’
A date or two would help to place events, but McCullin rarely uses them because the conflict is the ‘event’ and should be automatically placed in time. He is linear, so that helps to define time lines too. More of what he did in between assignments, back in England with his family, would have been interesting too. There is an account of progress in the journalism business, through closures, decreasing work assignments, and changes in personal relationships: ‘Inside I was a man losing his identity.’
But primarily, this is a rapid fire, straight-to-the-point narrative; there is no time for meandering musings. He selects the key remembrances in a sequential string of stories, connected only by the nature of McCullin’s job. Until it comes, sadly, to an abrupt end, in more ways than one.
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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