McCullin has had an incredibly life as a war photographer; he has captured conflicts in Vietnam, Bangladesh, the Congo, El Salvador, Biafra, Cambodia and the Middle East, including the Six-Day War in June 1967. He has witnessed the horrors of war and has even been injured as a result. In fact, in when capturing the conflict in Cambodia, McCulling was in Phnom Penh when a mortar bomb went off, killing others around him. Shrapnel was blown into his leg and he had to be rushed to hospital. In addition to this, he was imprisoned in Uganda, expelled from Vietnam, and even had a bounty put on his head in Lebanon. 

He began taking photography when he enlisted in the military; he was an assistant aerial reconnaissance photographer in the war. 

You might also be interested to know that Carol Ann Duffy wrote a poem about him called “War Photographer”. You can read the poem here. 

To read McCullin's full bio on his website, please click here. Alternatively, you can read an interview he gave for The Guardian in 2022 here.