Photograph © Philippe Vermes. Courtesy Aperture Foundation

Born in London on October 9, 1935, Don McCullin spent more than twenty years documenting conflict, disease, and inequality worldwide. As a correspondent for London's Sunday Times Magazine from 1966 to 1984, McCullin reported on the Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbors; Biafra's War of Secession from Nigeria; Bangladesh's War of Independence; and the Cambodian Civil War, in addition to numerous assignments on poverty and oppression. His work speaks unapologetically about the tragedy of warfare and the human beings who suffer its consequences.

McCullin grew up in poverty. At age fourteen, following the death of his father, he left school and worked at odd jobs. Conscripted into the Royal Air Force in 1954, he spent two years as an aerial photographer, gaining his first serious experience covering the 1956 Suez War.

His first published photographs were of a London street gang and appeared in The Observer in 1959. During and since his tenure at the Sunday Times Magazine, his images have turned the world's attention to the impact of war, famine, and economic and ecological crises.

Underscoring the impact of his stark, unwincing photojournalism, in 1972 McCullin was expelled from Uganda for life by the dictator Idi Amin, and in 1982 Margaret Thatcher's administration denied him a press pass during the Falklands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina. McCullin's significant commendations include the 1964 World Press Photo Award for his coverage of the war in Cyprus and an appointment as Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including the autobiography Unreasonable Behavior (1990), and has had major exhibitions at the Centre Nationale de la Photographie in Paris (1992), the Barbican Center (1998), the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London (2001), and the United Nations in New York (2001). He has been a member photographer of Contact Press Images since 1995.

The International Center of Photography, whose photojournalistic mission McCullin exemplifies, first officially recognized him in 1972, when founding director Cornell Capa included McCullin in his book The Concerned Photographer 2. ICP also hosted McCullin's first retrospective exhibition in 1980.

The Cornell Capa Infinity Award for Distinguished Achievement in Photography was inaugurated in 2000. Cornell Capa is now Director Emeritus of the International Center of Photography, which he founded in 1974 and led through its first 20 years. Mr. Capa has been a champion and inspiration to photographers, curators, editors, journalists, and writers on photography during his long, illustrious career.

Early morning, West Hartlepool, County Durham, U.K., 1963. © Don McCullin (Contact Press Images)