Photographer Don McCullin to focus on Vietnam for his final book

Don McCullin’s harrowing photographs of the Vietnam war are credited with helping to turn public opinion in the US against the conflict. Photograph: Don McCullin View image in fullscreen Don McCullin’s harrowing photographs of the Vietnam war are credited with helping to turn public opinion in the US against the conflict. Photograph: Don McCullin Photographer Don McCullin to focus on Vietnam for his final book Exclusive: The work will feature some of the photographer’s most powerful images from his 70-year career After more than seven decades of covering conflicts around the world, Don McCullin will return to Vietnam and his best-known images for his final book. The photographer, who got his start aged 23 when his image of a gang in Finsbury Park was published in the Observer, has decided to revisit the war and his 12-day stint with US marines during the battle of Hue in 1968. McCullin’s photographs from the battle, including a shell-shocked American soldier, are among the most iconic images of the conflict and widely credited with helping to turn public opinion in the US against the war. McCullin said he was still haunted by some of the photographs he took during one of the bloodiest and most notorious battles of the Tet offensive , which he described as “total madness and insanity”. View image in fullscreen McCullin’s editor at the Sunday Times, Harold Evans, said the secret to his talent was empathy for his subject. Photograph: Don McCullin “They bother me at night when I go to bed,” he said. “They come uninvited back to me and then I start saying: ‘Could I have done better? Could I have done this or done that?’ The actual battle I was in, the final big battle I was in 1968. I saw an awful lot of American soldiers getting killed very close to me.” One of his editors at the Sunday Times was Harold Evans , who said McCullin’s secret ingredient was empathy for his subject – whether that was criminals in north London or guerrilla fighters in central Africa. He combined a “cold eye informed by the warmth of his empathy”, according to Evans. Before he was dispatched to Vietnam, McCullin had cut his teeth shooting conflicts in the Congo in the bloody, chaotic lead-up to independence and in Cyprus, where he covered the civil war between Turkish and Greek factions . He was also present as the Berlin Wall was being built and the iron curtain was erected across Europe. View image in fullscreen An American soldier shelters from sniper fire in an abandoned home. Photograph: Don McCullin He retired from war photography aged 75, when he visited Aleppo in Syria and was no longer mobile enough to quickly duck out of harm’s way if needed. Since then he has published books about his other passions, including ancient Rome. So why go back to that war for his final book, which is called Vietnam. Why not revisit his work in Belfast or Biafra ? “Because of all the wars that have been raging in the last 20, 30 or 40 years, there was no war like Vietnam,” he said. “Sad