DON MCCULLIN'S IMAGES OF WAR

Don McCullin spent a lifetime chronicling the brutality of war. His photographs, now on view in a career retrospective at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, are dark, bleak and arresting. Many capture people at their most primal, cowering like hunted animals or gasping with despair. Some subjects are muted by their certain doom, such as the starving children he photographed in Biafra, who wait patiently for death. McCullin's soldiers tend to be villains, but some look like shellshocked boys.

These pictures "live in my soul", McCullin admits in an interview with The Economist. He has made it his job to give a voice to the voiceless; to capture the furrowed brows and dirty fingernails of history's victims. The result is hard to look at, startling and gut-wrenching. "There's not a great deal of room for joy," he concedes with sad self-awareness.

His work is also remarkable, a product of courage and heart. He narrates the images of this slideshow with The Economist:

"Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin", is on view at the Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, until June 13th